NYT Editorial: "The Republican Party needs to be crushed & the earth salted behind it"

[kpete]

?1603628795

............

...The Republican Party can’t win using ordinary methods. On the process side, they can win only by inflating the white vote via gerrymandering, cracked-and-packed districts, and ruthless black voter suppression. On the policy side, they can win only with heavy dollops of strident and outright bigotry against Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, and anyone else who comes along. Even Canadians will do in a pinch.

Today, the Republican Party exists for one and only one purpose: to pass tax cuts for the rich and regulatory rollbacks for corporations. They accomplish this using one and only method: unapologetically racist and bigoted appeals to win the votes of the heartland riff-raff they otherwise treat as mere money machines for their endless mail-order cons.

Like it or not, this is the modern Republican Party. It no longer serves any legitimate purpose. It needs to be crushed and the earth salted behind it, while a new conservative party rises to take its place…


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/opinion/sunday/trump-republican-party.html
via: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/25/1989406/-Must-Read-NY-Times-Obituary?utm_campaign=trending

[Newest Reality]

1. K&R

[RosevilleSparky]

71. I wonder..

What is it that takes a normal human being with hopes, dreams, BASIC HUMAN MORALITY, and twists it into GOP Kibble? Radiation? Bad water? Abused as a child?

The hate that vomits from their wailing masses defies description.

Why???

[Newest Reality]

74. I don't know for sure.

Maybe it's just a yin-yang duality in some sense.

Welcome to DU. Glad to have you aboard!

[Walleye]

75. Good question. I think most of us were brought up to think lying,cheating and stealing are wrong

[uriel1972]

76. No just greed and hypocrisy with a side of power hunger.

[dalton99a]

2. "Trump just greased the slide"

Most horrifically, Republican leaders have stood by as the president has lied to the public about a pandemic that has already killed more than 220,000 Americans. They have watched him politicize masks, testing, the distribution of emergency equipment and pretty much everything else. Some echo his incendiary talk, fueling violence in their own communities. In the campaign’s closing weeks, as case numbers and hospitalizations climb and health officials warn of a rough winter, Mr. Trump is stepping up the attacks on his scientific advisers, deriding them as “idiots” and declaring Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top expert in infectious diseases, a “disaster.” Only a smattering of Republican officials has managed even a tepid defense of Dr. Fauci. Whether out of fear, fealty or willful ignorance, these so-called leaders are complicit in this national tragedy.

Mr. Trump’s corrosive influence on his party would fill a book. It has, in fact, filled several, as well as a slew of articles, social media posts and op-eds, written by conservatives both heartbroken and incensed over what has become of their party.

But many of these disillusioned Republicans also acknowledge that their team has been descending into white grievance, revanchism and know-nothing populism for decades. Mr. Trump just greased the slide. “He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican Party has become in the last 50 or so years,” the longtime party strategist Stuart Stevens asserts in his new book, “It Was All a Lie.”

The scars of Mr. Trump’s presidency will linger long after he leaves office. Some Republicans believe that, if those scars run only four years deep, rather than eight, their party can be nursed back to health. Others question whether there is anything left worth saving. Mr. Stevens’s prescription: “Burn it to the ground, and start over.”

[kpete]

3. Thanks for adding more

NYT paywall is a nuisance

peace,
kp

[Tommymac]

28. Right On. It started in the 1960's when they courted the racist DixieCrats...

and won them over after President Johnson and the Democratic Congress passed all the Civil Rights Legislation.

Raygun accelerated the process, and the coalition with 2cd Amendment Nuts and the Religious Right in the late 1980's cemented their downward spiral.

Racists, rabid EndTimers and Evangelicals, and ignorant gun owners.

Lay with fleas and what does one expect?

[SheltieLover]

4. GOP & Federalists

Should be deemed terrorist organizations.

Btw, the ONLY way to salt the earth behind them is to prosecute, imprison or put to death & appropriately seize assets of every single one!

[Timer]

53. Unfortunately the quote in the OP is misattributed. It's from Mother Jones, not the NY Times. nt

[RKP5637]

5. Today's GOP is now a "Terrorist Cult Organization." Anyone tells you they're a republican, WATCH OUT

[marybourg]

8. I think they're a death cult.

[RKP5637]

13. Yeah, really, that's closer to what they've become. I can't imagine any sane individual

wanting to be part of the GOP. It's now a very ugly and hateful political party.

[SergeStorms]

48. Except when it comes to a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.

Then they're the "pro-life" party, all the way down to the cellular level. After that............ let 'em die, or we'll kill them.

[marybourg]

55. In their own mind they're "pro life", but

they’d send a woman with an unwanted pregnancy to a back-street abortionist, when she could have a safe procedure in a doctors office. So yes, they’re a death cult in every way.

[wnylib]

10. I'm waiting for the SPLC to put the

Republican party on their hate watch list.

[RKP5637]

15. Yep, really should be! n/t

[JHB]

6. It's not the 4th year of the Trump presidency, it's the 40th year of the Reagan "revolution"

https://driftglass.blogspot.com/2020/09/look-on-my-works-ye-mighty-and-despair.html

The Reagan Revolution at 40: Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair!
October 1, 2020

If you walked away from this week's "debate" hellscape gasping like a gaffed trout and wondering what the fuck you just saw, well I'm sorry be the one to break it to you, but you're about 40 years late to the circus.

And here here at the ass-end Reagan Revolution, what you saw manifested on stage at the Sheila and Eric Samson Pavilion in Cleveland, Ohio, and what you may have read in much of the media after-action reports, was the end-state of the of the Republican party's two most important projects

You mean tax cuts and judges? Nope.

Sure, destroying the government by obstruction, sedition and looting the treasury (and then securing their getaway by packing the courts with a phalanx of dead-eyed far-right fanatics) is very important to Republicans, but this is the downstream effect of the two most important Republican projects of our lifetime, not the causes.

The causes of all the nearly-incomprehensible bug-eyed madness your see running wild in the GOP are these.

First, the engineering of a voting base who will believe anything that Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Tucker Carlson or Donald Trump shits into their skulls. Literally. Anything.

Much more at the link. And the second big Republican project was the methodical gelding of the free press.

[Layzeebeaver]

9. THIS exactly!

A lost generation...

[mjvpi]

21. Bingo. It's the same Republican Party. Trump just says it out loud.

In many ways, President Cheney was even worse. He was organized and competent, in an evil genius sort of way. It was all dog whistles, not bull horns like Trump. But the blatant attacks on anything that hindered maximum profit have been going on since FDR. Reagan said fuck it, selfishness is a virtue. And a wealthy, mostly white middle class, went all in.

[tanyev]

25. Good read, thanks.

[RobertDevereaux]

29. NO NEW "Conservative" party!

Although if it will help hasten the burial of the Repug Party, go right ahead!

[Solly Mack]

34. +1

[Hekate]

35. This.

[dchill]

36. "...shits into their skulls." Incredibly true.

[DENVERPOPS]

47. Bravo !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some of us have been screaming about it from the rooftops since the first day of the Reagan years.
Actually it was the Cheney/HWBush administration, with already brain damaged Regan as a front man......

9/11 allowed them to muster the nation so they could quickly roll out their Project New American Century manifesto........and here we are today.

If it isn't stopped here, in the 2020 election, WASF.........

[Mike 03]

7. Holy shit. That's the actual NYT Editorial Board.

[SharonClark]

14. Holy shit indeed. It's not just some guest opinion piece.

[thesquanderer]

16. OP headline is wrong. That quote is from Mother Jones, not the NYT. (n/t)

[BumRushDaShow]

27. The NYT headline is - "R.I.P., G.O.P. The Party of Lincoln had a good run. Then came Mr. Trump."

[Auggie]

17. Same thought here

[onetexan]

81. yes i was shocked at how simply blatant the language of condemnation was. I'm sure Repugs w say it's

a liberal paper that no longer has relevance. I did not like how the NYT treated Hillary in 2016 leading up to the general election. Im still miffed over that.

[Paladin]

11. It's a start, NYT.

Want to do something really impressive? Rid your editorial section of abrasive sub-par scribes like Ross Douthat and Bret Stephens. If you insist on having some conservative opinions, at least get some writers with a modicum of talent. Put Mo Dowd on it, she seems to have lots of time on her hands.

[lagomorph777]

72. Let MAGA Haberman write for the Society page.

Oops - did away with that? Too bad.

[Sherman A1]

12. I think they are being charitable

but that is certainly a good start.

[Silver Gaia]

18. Please clarify the source of the quote in the OP?

I read the entire NYT editorial, and while it decidedly rakes the G.O.P. through the muck, it does not actually achieve the scorched earth quality of that quote, which is from Kevin Drum at Mother Jones (August 2018), as noted at the DKos link.

I just know that many, like me, will assume that the quote is from the NYT, and may not actually read further. Mr. Drum deserves the credit for those searing words.

Thank you!

[mrsadm]

42. The source of the quote is from the DailKos, who quotes Mother Jones

which I found here:
[link:https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/25/1989406/-Must-Read-NY-Times-Obituary?utm_campaign=trending|

THe Times article does have a similar quote at the end of their article: "Mr. Stevens’s prescription: “Burn it to the ground, and start over.”

[Silver Gaia]

69. Yes. That is what I am saying.

[Silver Gaia]

70. Your NYT quote is not the same as what is in the OP.

I love kpete's posts, and always read them. I appreciate the hard work.

I see a misperception in this thread that the words from Mother Jones are from the NYT, and simply asked that this be clearly noted.

[Iggo]

19. I thought I read somewhere on DU that the NYT is a RW rag.

I believe a bumper sticker was even cited, and proudly.

I wonder what those evil RWers are up to with this kind of editorial?

Clever bastards. Better keep an eye on them.

[Warpy]

20. Those masks of respectability are finally off

and they have been exposed as what they are, worshippers of Mammon, servants of the Antichrist, for those out there with a religious inclination.

I see them as fascists, men with no ethics whatsoever who are playing a sick game of follow the leader right over a cliff. Either we destroy their party or face our own destruction.

[Hip2bSquare]

22. Forgot religious hypocrisy

Another reason I never supported republicans. Love thy neighbor...well only if they marry the opposite sex and only if they pray this particular way....follow the rules on these few pages, but it's ok to ignore the rules of this page.

"Is adultery no longer a big deal in Indiana and in America?” Pence "It was less than 20 years later that Pence would gaze adoringly at the adulterer-in-chief".

Rules for thee but not for me.

[liberalmuse]

23. Yes!

I’ve been saying this for about 15 years now. A lot of us have. Nice too see it in the NYT, even if it is an editorial. A thousand times yes!

[JCMach1]

24. Damnatio memoriea

[Lonestarblue]

26. My only quibble with this editorial is that we need a conservative Republican Party.

We don’t. Conservatives have worked long and hard to destroy the federal government. Conservatives are pro business and anti worker. Conservatives believe in the economic policy of trickle down, which has never worked. Conservatives believe in no regulations for businesses. Conservatives believe that climate warming does not need to be addressed.

Conservatives are against health care for anyone not employed by a business providing it as a benefit. Conservatives are against the unions that secure good wages that help the economy. Conservatives want an annual balanced federal budget, which I don’t completely disagree with but would cripple the federal government In the near term. Conservatives want their religious beliefs legislated into law. Conservatives are anti-science, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ. If conservatives don’t hold these beliefs, what exactly would a conservative Republican Party stand for? The opposite of these beliefs is a Democrat.

[LiberalLovinLug]

49. That is the Grand Illusion

That a right wing party, whether it is called Republican, or Conservative as in most other countries, has as their top prority, to make themselves and those even richer than themselves richer, and to curry favour with them. To use the machinations of the government when in power, an institution they despise, to dismantle government protections for their citizens. Both environmentally by reducing regulations for polluting for their friends in the corporate world, and financially by keeping wages low, unions out, and entitled benefits reduced.

And because they don't have any other agenda to talk about, the only way they win is using fear. Fear that any other party will persecute the major western religion ie..Christians. Fear the other party will take away guns, your ability to protect yourself and your family. Fear of their kids turning gay because the other party is okay with setting an example that LGBTQ are just like them, and just want to love someone too. Shocking. That immigrants are coming to steal their jobs. Fear that allowing any kind of government run heath insurance will lead to a Communist country.
etc etc etc'

Its the same worldwide. At least in western democracies. In the US Mitch is gleefully confirming hundreds of "unfit" judges, many having never even tried a case yet, who only have to share a right wing loyalty to ruling for businesses over people to be confirmed.

So even if the Phoenix rises into a new Republican party, a new conservative coalition, its goals will be just the same as the old Republican party. Just not as overt.

[Jon King]

30. The gig is up.....

Folks are finally wising up that the Republican party has been a crock of crap, peaking with the Reagan myth, ending with Trump. The Dems are the future, all ages embraced, science, technology, clean energy, health care for all, facts and reality.

As long as the Dems govern well and for the people, demographics alone says the Repubs will be reduced to about 20 rural states and meaningless on a national stage.

[ffr]

31. Absolutely!

Scorched Earth. Vote every conservative out!

[My Pet Orangutan]

37. "No pardons for 'Good Germans' "

-Steve Schmidt

[Hekate]

32. The whole editorial at the link is excellent. For a change, it's not an Op-Ed, but NYT's Ed Board...

Echoing Lincoln Party language, they acknowledge the whole party rotted from within over decades, and needs to be leveled to the ground and the earth salted behind it.

We need a robust centrist two-party system for the country to survive, but one of those parties is dead. There’s immeasurable amounts of work to be done — but first Biden needs to win this election and we need to make sure he has a House and Senate to work with.

[Illumination]

33. You nailed it!...

[PatrickforO]

38. I saw this article.

Very good. And true, I think.

[theaocp]

39. I further recommend that they get zero voice

in a Biden administration.

[bucolic_frolic]

40. It's the same playbook since 1980, it's just the raw and only thing now

In fact racist strategy go back to Nixon.

If we do pull this off well, Trump's base will not go quietly. It'll be Mitch2008, but led by Proud Jr.

[Grins]

41. I wish they wouldn't hold back and tell is what they really feel...

This line:
”...while a new conservative party rises to take its place…”

Ummmmm, no. The myth of conservatism died DECADES ago.

[calimary]

43. Straight into the garbage with you, GOP.

I like this idea. Call it the "Carthage treatment."

Destroy it, and sow the ground with salt so nothing will grow. Worked for the Romans in ancient times. Carthage never rose again to threaten Rome's rule.

All this yapping about how we need a new "Republican party" or "conservative party or whatever-the-hell they want to call it - I don't want to hear ANY of it!

I don't want to hear anything about ANY revival or rebirth of that pack of jackals and idiots and racists and misogynists and all the other "great 6th-Century-BC minds of our time".

I'd be happy if there NEVER was another CONservative collective like them. Or a purportedly "new and improved" CONservative collective or a "gee, we really didn't mean it, we're NICE!" CONservative collective. OF ANY SORT.

I've heard all the arguments about - we need that other side/we need to hear the opposition/blah-blah-blah. Okay. Fine. YOU go throw the door open to welcome that "other side". YOU make room for "the opposition". Leave me the hell OUT OF IT!

I think we need 10-20 YEARS of solid liberal/Democratic domination so we can fix EVERYTHING that trump and his toadies fucked up. Government, the economy, race relations, international relations (what's left of them), education, the climate crisis (!!!!!!), immigration, all the regulatory agencies, the rule of law, and the very Constitution that even the red-staters claim is a sacred document, even though they don't act or behave or vote like they do.

I don't even want to see, much less hear or read from ANY republi-CON blathering about their so-called "better ideas." They're FUCKED. Fucked, that is, for everybody who doesn't rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Anybody else in their view can just go pound sand.

I think THEY need to go pound sand. And do penance in the wilderness, for a factor of YEARS, until we've had enough time to clean up their mess and set everything back straight again. And maybe not even by then. To me, they've forfeited ANY right to govern or to lead. They need a wholesale reexamination of their utterly wrong, cruel, narrow-minded, and anti-social thinking, if they ever expect to be trusted with any sort of "leadership" position again.

Just my opinion.

[FakeNoose]

61. And it goes double for libertarians

F*** them all. Look where we are now, because of them. Republicans, conservatives, right-wingers, libertarians: We're done with all of them.

[Laelth]

44. Hear! Hear! k&r n/t

-Laelth

[mzmolly]

45. Well said.

Let's hope we're on the precipice of making this a reality.

[panfluteman]

46. The Republican Party Replaced the Whigs. Now It's Time for Some New Party to Replace Them.

The Republican party's decline was all a gradual, natural progression, with one thing leading to another. Instead of doing the hard work of reinventing American conservatism to appeal to a younger and more ethnically diverse voter demographic, the Republicans increasingly resorted to election cheating and voter suppression tactics to win elections. With Trump, those trends crossed over the line into outright treason with the enlistment of foreign help - in other words, the Russians. Trump greatly accelerated the downward slide, perhaps, but at heart he was just an authoritarian demagogue who was looking for a party to prey on and take over, and the Republican party, with its anti-democratic weaknesses and flaws, was like a suitable host with a weakened political immune system, and therefore vulnerable to the opportunistic infection that is Trump and Trumpism. A sad, sad story indeed.

[moondust]

50. Greed and hate.

I agree with others noting that Trump is a logical result of the 40-year devolution of the GOP that started with the Nixon/Goldwater "Southern Strategy" and Reagan subtly stoking and exploiting bigotry as well as green-lighting unbridled greed. This time it's not just another financial bankruptcy for Trump but moral bankruptcy for millions who would even consider voting for him.

The foundation of Trump and his party seems to have some things in common with that of Hitler and his party. For example:

GREED, HATE DROVE HITLER

[Hotler]

52. don't forget selfishness. nt

[Brainfodder]

51. Looking back (early) it's amazing they fell for THIS GUY?

All the red flags were lined up!

DUH!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This section had some stuff, but decided they aint worth it!
-------------------------------------------------------------------

[RobertDevereaux]

54. Flatten the Repug Party into well-earned oblivion everywhere on the ballot.

Bury their toxic brand.

[liberalla]

56. This is an important read.

I like that they agree with me... but they say it better.

[Skittles]

57. I disagree a new conservative party needs to take its place

they stunk WAY before Trump came along

[Cha]

58. GET OUT PUPPETS.

[Initech]

59. The GOP is now the party of Fox News, Trump, and Limbaugh.

They need to go.

[friendly_iconoclast]

60. For those with a classical education: GOP delenda est...

[Lucky Luciano]

65. They'll go the way of Carthage hopefully!

[uriel1972]

77. I always felt that Carthage was hard done by.

The GOP on the other hand can kiss my grits.

[locks]

62. I was a child when Hoover

finally got crushed by a great Dem Roosevelt. The Repug party has not changed since then.

[karin_sj]

63. Could not agree more

They need to go the way of all the other parties that have been long gone. Good riddance assholes!

[jmowreader]

64. Something needs to be added

If we are going to get rid of the Republican Party, which needs to happen, we also need to permanently bar everyone who has ever been in it from holding any office of trust at any level of government. Shut the entire batch of them out of office for all time. If we don't. all the current pukes in the GOP will simply move to the new "Freedom Party" or whatever they want to call it, and within one election cycle we've got the GOP back just as rotten as ever.

[Efilroft Sul]

66. I prefer to pull back and nuke it from orbit.

[Blue Owl]

67. I like the sound of that!

[orangecrush]

68. ...

[url=https://ibb.co/S6mJ7qK][img][/img][/url]

[roamer65]

73. Pulverized and scattered into the winds.

[yuiyoshida]

78. NUKE IT....

make sure they never come back again.

[Mr. Ected]

79. As long as people believe that our Constitution guarantees unchecked capitalism

Rather than democracy, we will have the formative materials for a new conservative party.

If your core belief is that America begins with a dollar sign and not with the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, you need to sit down and read a bit about American history.

[uriel1972]

80. Sadly, too true.

[guyfromla]

82. Didn't these guys also say Iraq had WMD

FUCK NYT!! They are taking our focus from trump and measuring the drapes already fuckers..