The Republican Party

 

(Ain’t Nothin’ But A) Houseparty

They're dancing on the ceiling, they're dancing on the floor
People everywhere coming through the door
They know there's a party going on
Through the dance and romance all night long

Has the Republican (house) Party gotten out of control?

Nancy Pelosi has said that the Republican Party is needed for the good of the Nation. By that I assume that she means the party of Everett Dirksen, Gerald Ford, John McCain, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, George Romney, etc and not the party of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Kevin McCarthy, among many others including he who shall not be named.

Speaker Pelosi means the party of limited government, not the party of no government. She means the party of careful reflection before action, not the party that acts first and gets itself in trouble. The party that acts for the country, and not for themselves. I miss them too! Where did it all go wrong?

People might point to the election of Donald Trump. Others might point to the rise of the Tea Party. Others might point to the Supreme Court’s decision on Florida in 2000. I would like to suggest that it happened when Gorge H. W. Bush accepted the nomination as the Vice President of Ronald Reagan. Somehow a Faustian bargain was struck and the branch of the party that mocked voodoo economics and supply side tax cuts, embraced those positions in order to achieve power.

A candidate who was divorced, and from Hollywood became the darling of evangelicals  (and if you believe that they share the same sexual beliefs, then I have some ocean front property in Kansas I would like to sell you).   A first lady, whose beliefs in astrology and the occult that would have gotten her burned at the stake as a witch in years past, became beloved by evangelicals  A president who was a former union leader  (of the Screen Actors Guild), and beloved by the union members, broke unions. A president who is beloved by the lower and middle class promoted a tax code that has benefited primarily the rich. If he had been opposed by the moderates in the Republican Party, he might never have been elected.

The consequences have been the immediate elevation of Justice Thomas, and the eventual nominations of Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett. Would we have had either the Iraq War, the Capitol Riot, vaccine and climate (not to mention science in general) deniers, if the Republican Party had not sold its soul. But the genie is out of the bottle and the Republican Party we need may be nowhere to be found. It may be time to shut down the Party.