“I didn’t come here,” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina complained last week, “to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy.” Tillis was referring to Republicans who were abandoning a deal on border security because they thought reaching a solution with President Joe Biden would hurt Trump’s electoral chances in the fall. It is immoral, Tillis added, to look “the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”
As Bruce Willis’s fictional cop John McClane would say: Welcome to the party, pal. In theory, Republicans care deeply about the situation on the southern United States border. In reality, most of them seem to care only about whatever Trump wants at any given moment, and what Trump wants is to take refuge in the Oval Office from his multiple legal problems. Tillis’s outburst, although welcome, was a rare moment of candor from a senior Republican senator about the degree to which the party’s once and future nominee has gutted the GOP of any remaining principles.
For years, Trump has attacked and obliterated anything like virtue in the Republican Party, a process that regularly features Republicans pulling their political souls from their bodies and handing them to Trump in jars for display on his mantle at Mar-a-Lago. (Ted Cruz going from the potential conscience of the 2016 GOP convention to a Trump-praising, phone-banking flunky is only one such example.)
Conservatives abandon decency? Isn’t that like saying wolves abandon veganism? When the fuck were conservatives virtuous?
They’re not abandoning anything. They simply don’t feel the need to hide it anymore.
They finally have the implied permission they’ve always craved to return to the days when white guys controlled everything, minorities (now including LGBTQ+) can’t sit at the same counters in delis, and they could smack their secretaries on the ass and say “thanks, toots.”
This is who they’ve always been.
rich people controlled everything.
Fixed that for you. To imply that no white cultures have ever been vicimized is erasure on a colossal scale.
Fixed that for you. To imply that no white cultures have ever been vicimized is erasure on a colossal scale.
I’m referring specifically to the United States in the pre-civil rights era. Not on a global scale, so simmer down with your umbrage thanks. I’ve got enough education that know that slavery and other forms of oppression have crossed the colour barrier. But in pre-civil rights era U.S. it was clearly WHITE people. Yes, there were poor white people who had it hard as well, but they weren’t getting lynched and their towns burned to the ground ON TOP of that.
If you can point me to one American poor white person who had to go through something like the Tulsa massacre, I’ll accept your rebuke. If not, kindly go away.
Irish and Italian people were brutally oppressed and segregated in the 18th and 19th centuries in the US and Canada.
Hell, there is even a famous movie about it.
Not to mention that the brutally oppressed history of the Slavic people going back over a millenia.
Do I deny the Irish and Italians were treated like shit? No, of course not.
But let’s not forget that an Irish Catholic won the presidency while Jim Crow laws were still largely in effect.
There is an ocean of difference between being hated by your neighbours, and having a government that literally enshrines your exclusion into law.
Except discrimination of the Irish(at least) was enshrined in law, just not during the Jim Crow era.
Lol, okay bruh. The last decent republican was Eisenhower.
Eisenhower, in fact, chose to run as a Republican because he felt that the party needed to find its ‘maturity’ and embrace progress.
Clearly, he failed at changing the prevailing winds in the party.
I strongly thought in the 90’s that Colin Powell would be the first black president. I didn’t fathom the decent into madness that the Republican Party would succumb to.
I thought Sarah Palin in 2008 was the full descent into madness and that this was rock bottom and a moment of reckoning for the GOP. Little did I know we were actually sitting at the top of the slide back then.
I remember reading that his wife was adamantly opposed to him running for Vice President. She knew what would get stirred up.
McCain wasn’t the worst.
He was a staunchly pro-aristocrat war-happy troll who brought sarah palin to national prominence. He wanted to increase wealth inequality with tax cuts for the rich and slashing medicare, which would literally kill poor people. He opposed torture having been tortured himself - another conservative who can’t imagine or empathize with anything that hasn’t happened to them personally.
And yet, you’re completely correct. He wasn’t the worst republican. He wasn’t even the worst repulican on his presidential ticket.
He was a vastly different candidate in 2000. Everyone just remembers 2008 after the party had essentially broken him. If he’d gotten the nom over Bush I think things would’ve been much better. Still a Republican, but he wasn’t afraid to do what he thought was best for the country over the party. By 2008 they’d sunk their claws in and forced him to be their candidate.
Straight line from that asshat to trump via palin. He tried. But he gave in to the party rather than following his heart. He admits to that in his memoir.
TBH, if fascism has to rise, I’m glad it did with the most incompetent frace of a man it could have. Could you imagine if someone more intelligent or charismatic was heading this nonsense?
Of course it would be nicer if it hadn’t risen at all, but here we are…
Hitler was seen as incompetent and a joke. Its not as good as you hope. Its bad and trying to make it seem not so bad is worse.
Maybe stupidity and lack of charisma is part of the winning combination though? I often make the argument you just made, but I’ve been questioning it a bit lately…maybe stupid and foul is necessary to gain power in the Republican party? 🤔
The thing is that a more competent politician wouldn’t have needed to go full fascist. Bush Jr got caught lying the country into two wars and we gave him a pass. Reagan got caught smuggling in tons of cocaine and it got shrugged off. I liken it to popping a giant zit, gallons and gallons of pus is running out, but it was always there just beneath the surface.
They have been doing that for a while now and will continue.
The elected officials are only as good as the public who vote for them. Nice to blame the symptom.
Decency, morals, humanity, pretty much everything good they are now shitting on it and wiping their asses with it.
They’re either sucking up to him now to get the good position in his reich, or Trump has dirt on them and can blackmail them. Given the track record of criminal activity from GOP members, I’d say a lot of them want that dirt to stay in the ground.
If you’ve never seen it, watch the movie ‘Network.’ It’s amazing how that movie went from cutting edge satire to docudrama so quickly.
Pay attention. there’s a minor character, a silver haired corporate board member who is adamantly against the plans to convert the news division to entertainment. Guess where he ends up at the conclusion?
Black Mirror has a more modern take on it, but yeah, Network was one of the canaries in the coal mine.
Yup, the Waldo moment…
They worked on this for generations, dumbing down the population and getting people ready to accept Republican totalitarianism. They missed the mark with GW Bush and instead got stuck with Trump. They just didn’t think they could get away with it under Bush, there were still too many good people in the government. Now they are stuck with idiot Trump.
Remember, they are fighting for us Americans! They really care about the average American.
The most shocking part of this story is that Tillis is the voice of reason.
