Republicans are now the Grim Old Reaper party!

Echo opinion written by Paul Krugman published in Arkansasonline.com, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette: 

Obviously, the Republican party has lost its way. Republicans have fallen and they cannot get up. 

Now the Grim Old Reaper party have become #Trumpzis

Krugman- Here's what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn't snap the party back to sanity--and it didn't--nothing will.

What isn't clear yet is who will end up facing doom. Will it be the GOP as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? We don't know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes.

About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week.

On Tuesday Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump's role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he's no longer in office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.)

The GOP's national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules.

And the fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. 

Incredibly, the Arizona state GOP party censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the coronavirus.

 The Texas GOP has adopted the slogan "We are the storm," which is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link. Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by the rioters themselves, that the attack on the U.S. Capitol was a left-wing false flag operation.

How did this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media, notably Fox News.
This opens the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something that I've seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates. 

What remains of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates, and so on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles.

This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich's takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump's reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head.

And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America's two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it's not coming back.
What happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically. And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to impotence in the face of a Democratic super-majority.

But it's not at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans have become more extreme, they have lost broad support; the GOP has won the popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11.

Given the unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and came fairly close to pulling it out in 2020 despite a deficit of 7 million votes. The Senate is evenly divided, even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people than Republicans.

And the Republican response to electoral defeat isn't to change policies to win over voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the state's electoral votes and Senate seats.

So the Republicans who control the state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID requirements and other measures to limit voting.

The bottom line is that we don't know whether we've earned more than a temporary reprieve. A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the legitimacy of its opposition isn't getting saner, and still has a good chance of taking complete power in four years.
--–––––v–––––--
Paul Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, writes for the New York Times.

UGH! On Thursday Kevin McCarthy (i.e., the dummy Charlie McCarthy's evil twin!) the House minority leader--who still hasn't conceded that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump "bears responsibility" for the attack on Congress--visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make amends.

Republicans - Leaderless, Rudderless and Consumed by Rage

Republicans, or the Grand Old Party (now the Grumpy Old Party) were, once upon a time, a breeding ground for conservative, albeit, ethical leadership.  

House Speaker John Boehner certainly fails the leadership needed to break the party's ties with extremist T-Party zealots.

In fact, the Republican Party gained support as an ethical alternative to the Know Knowthing Party, which was really a refuge for people in the radical right wing Ku Klux Klan.  Republicans once stood for something right, but not "right wing".

Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Southern Democratic Party and the briefly popular Know Nothing Party. The main cause was opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas. The Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. The first public meeting where the name "Republican" was suggested for a new anti-slavery party was held on March 20, 1854 in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.

How is it, therefore, that a political movement, founded on high minded principles, has managed to turn itself inside out? 

Today's Republicans act more like the party they were founded to oppose.  They turn a blind eye to poverty rather than share the wealth of our Capitalist economy; they oppose immigration reform unless, of course, the immigrants want to live in America like they're indentured servants, rather than citizens and they would just as soon secede from the United States, rather than compromise their right wing extremist principles.  These mean spirited attributes are a description of the party the Republicans were created to oppose.  

Abraham Lincoln and Dwight David Eisenhower would not recognize today's Republican Party. They were principled party leaders.  

Lincoln, of course, made huge political sacrifices and was eventually martyred because he led the nation into the Civil War, to eliminate slavery.  

Eisenhower led the nation through a Civil Rights crisis during the integration of the schools in Little Rock Arkansas, because the segregated South continued to hold to the principle of white supremacy, ignoring the Supreme Court school integration ruling.  

Eisenhower and the Little Rock (Integration) Crisis President Eisenhower, who was vacationing in Newport, Rhode Island, arranged to meet Arkansas Governor Faubus there to discuss the tense situation in Little Rock. In their meeting, Eisenhower thought Faubus agreed to enroll African American students in the Little Rock schools, so he told Faubus that his National Guard troops could stay at Central High and enforce order. Once back in Little Rock, however, Governor Faubus withdrew the National Guard. A few days later, 9 African American students slipped into the school to enroll and a full scale riot erupted. The situation quickly ran out of control, as Governor Faubus did nothing to stop the violence. Finally, the Little Rock mayor appealed directly to President Eisenhower for help. Eisenhower acted boldly. He placed the Arkansas National Guard under federal control and sent 1,000 U.S. Army paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to assist them in restoring order in Little Rock. The daring tactic worked and the African American students were enrolled without further violent disturbances. The Supreme Court law was upheld. Nevertheless, Eisenhower was criticized both by those who felt he had not done enough to ensure civil rights for African Americans and those who believed he had gone too far in asserting federal power over the states. History has proven Eisenhower's decision was right.  He was a Republican who was also a leader.  

This is what President Eisenhower said to the American people on September 24, 1957:

Good Evening, My Fellow Citizens: For a few minutes this evening I want to speak to you about the serious situation that has arisen in Little Rock. To make this talk I have come to the President’s office in the White House. I could have spoken from Rhode Island, where I have been staying recently, but I felt that, in speaking from the house of Lincoln, of Jackson and of Wilson, my words would better convey both the sadness I feel in the action I was compelled today to take and the firmness with which I intend to pursue this course until the orders of the Federal Court at Little Rock can be executed without unlawful interference."Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts,” said President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1957 address on Little Rock, Arkansas.

Clearly, today's Republican party has no leaders like Lincoln and Eisenhower. As a result, Republicans are a party without direction, rudderless, flailing around like there're lost at sea, without a compass.  Extremists have taken over the GOP, like a band of pirates ransacking a ghost ship.

What's worse, Republican moderates act like hostages, rather than patriots.  They're unable to fix the party, while the situation continues to worsen.

Eleanor Clift writes in the Daily Beast how Republicans are in a Kamikase mode. In other words, they appear to be self destructing.

Similarly, like Kamikase pilots who crashed and burned, Republicans are taking the party down along with them, while creating a dangerous political impact crater.  Many right wing minded people are falling into this slippery crater. Most of them may never climb out, because they need a leader to show them the way up the slippery slope into which they've fallen.

Clift reports:  "The Republican Party...(has taken) a sharp turn to the right, confounding more moderate voices who have been urging the party to re-brand itself after last year’s (2012) election loss. A Tea Party rally outside the US Capitol Thursday captured the defiant mood with the far right maligning the "merely right". Talk-show host (and right wing extremist) Glenn Beck called the GOP “the Whig party,” with John Boehner the head Whig for appearing open to compromise. There were cries of “learn English” when Florida Republican Mario Diaz-Balart spoke a few words of Spanish from the podium. Florida Senator Marco Rubio, once a Tea Party favorite, didn’t attend the rally. Part of the Gang of Eight working on a bipartisan immigration bill, Rubio's name drew loud boos."

This incendiary scene described by Clift is as dangerous a rally as any Ku Klux Klan gathering, only without the shroud of hooded demons and absent the rage of fire and brimstone cross burning.  But, the intent of the Tea Party is exactly the same as a Ku Klux Klan terrorism gathering. These right wing extremists are acting like the pro-slavery, white supremacy groups the Republicans were once determined to oppose.

Where are the Republicans who once stood up for something?  Where are you?  Help Wanted:  a few decent minded, ethical, righteous and civil rights minded Republicans, paaleeze stand up and take charge of your leaderless and rudderless political party, before the zealots consume even more people into their incendiary rage.