Death Throes of the Republican Party

Dems Need a Vision

From a Google Image Search - The Times

If we turf out Trump and Musk, we still have Republicans to deal with. Republicans have many active organizations that concentrate solely on injecting right-wing ideology into our government. (They are listed in the front of Project 2025.) Republicans will eventually get rid of all liberals in our government because they believe they know the best way to run America. They have taught many Americas to believe that liberals are monsters.

Republicans wrote the almost 1,000-page document, Project 2025 and it is the blueprint they are following right now. We are only in February of 2025 and Trump and Musk have moved full-speed-ahead to slash agencies from our government, agencies established legally and according to our constitution by Congress or the Executive branch. Russell Vaught, one of the key authors of Project 2025 has just been confirmed (by Republican votes only) to lead the Office of Management and Budget which usually informs us of the real cost of government bills, programs, and tax cuts. From this time on all we can expect from the OMB is crickets or lies.

So far Republicans (through Musk) have raided the US Treasury, USAID, the FBI and they have a six pack of young tech bros looking over our personal data as they decide which of us should be cut off from SS and Medicare/Medicaid, SNAP, school lunches. They have confirmed a vaccine denier to head the agency that manages our healthcare. They have appointed an alcoholic misogynist to lead the Pentagon. They have appointed a woman who wants to close the Education Department to head the Education Department. They are well into implementing their fantasy of small conservative government.

The population of America in 1789 was something like 4 million people. America is now home to 340 million people. Yet Republicans created a new branch of law called Originalism to analyze the original content of our documents, to erase the 240+ years of legislation that have allowed America to keep pace with our growth and complexity and to choose the thing our forefathers did not choose.

Our founders ended up backing a strong central government as opposed to a loose collection of empowered states (a copy of Europe). Republicans want to go back to the 18th century and take the latter course. Although they want a weak central government, they want a strong man as president (a dictator or king). They want to do this, they say, for cultural reasons. They want religion and government to work together to stop what they feel is moral slippage. They think that rudeness, drug use, crime, sex trafficking and all evils are the result of liberal ideas about tolerance, diversity, equity, and inclusion (previously called "woke"). So, empathy is out, and tough love is in. Taxes are out and greed is in. Meanwhile they have been dividing Americans into those who love Trump and those who (understatement) don't.

America has this modern myth that billionaires rose from humble beginnings; they dropped out of college to work in their garages inventing computers from scratch. Now they have homes around the world and can do as they please, even become an unelected co-president of America. If tech is not your thing, millionaires also are made in the music industry and the sports industry. Education has fallen out of fashion, college professors say current students have never read a whole book. Pop culture says that you can manifest your way to millions. It's possible that the myths repeated on social media about success in business and the advent of Tik Tok stars has turned financial success into a spiritual exercise, hype over substance. Perhaps people believe that if they back billionaires they will also end up rich.

If the left, or those who are not fans of having Republicans and Evangelicals take over the governance of America, demonstrate and win, they really ought to have a plan for what our government will look like if they crush conservative extremism and take back our democracy from fascists. Will we still be a two-party system? Will we trust the Republican Party going forward? Will we simply find a way for the majority party to govern until extremism modifies? Will we push a reset button and restore the government to a point where it worked for both parties? Will we end up in a civil war and what vision will the left be fighting for? Revolutions that leave the future to chance often backfire.

Republicans are turning their backs on the values America has espoused for decades. We have welcomed refugees, people escaping war, exploitation, famine, cruel rulers, and now climate change. We have understood that if we take care of the poorest, youngest and oldest among us that this improves the quality of life for all of us. We learned that helping citizens of other nations fight diseases helps avoid plagues and pandemics for all of us. Will retreating from our increasingly complex world even be possible in the age of AI and computers?

We don't always help people out of a true altruistic motivation. We often put ourselves in the place of those experiencing misfortune because that could happen to us. Giving benefits to those in need fights crime, depression, poverty and more.

Republicans swear that offering benefits to people in need turns them into government dependents. Republicans contend that the libs are grooming children while liberals believe they are encouraging an understanding of different cultural experiences. In this way education increases empathy and allows children whose lives don't match what is defined as the norm to be more comfortable with their differences.

Republicans deny the evidence of science which tells us that gender is complicated, and individuals do not always fall strictly into either a male or female role. They want people to crawl back into their closets and stay with their gender as assigned at birth.

Republicans want women's rights to be set by men. Perhaps women should never have been allowed to vote. They certainly shouldn't be allowed to plan their families. They shouldn't be in the army and, if not for DEI, women would not be as prevalent in the world of work either. There is nothing wrong with the progress liberals have sought for women, except that Republicans want to use a book written 3000 years ago (as interpreted by conservatives) to rule the behavior of twenty-first century women.

If we demonstrate against Trump/Musk policies, we legitimize the coup. We pretend that our government is functioning as usual. We pretend that we believe the Republicans will ditch the power position they find themselves in and give in to our wishes. They seem to be in lockstep and keeping each other in line. Capitulation might work if we only had to contend with Trump. That is not the case. We now must contend with Project 2025 and Musk also. Republicans show no signs of stepping out of line.

We cannot assume that if we fight to restore regular order that we can win without launching a powerful campaign of our own to counter fascism and reactionary ideology. America made the mistake with the rebels who left the union to fight with the south in the Civil War of accepting them back into our government too quickly. America never became truly united states after the Civil War. This is reflected in the red state/blue state divide that we are currently faced with.

Can we beat the Republicans without war and what will happen to the Republicans we root out of our government? Can we afford to simply resist until the 2026 election? Will winning the three open seats in Congress help hold the line for a while? Can we reboot America, avoid this trip to the past, and rejoin our allies once more?

Trump's followers do not seem to be dismayed by what Trump and Elon are doing. Will Trump need the Republican Party once he cements his position as king or emperor, or whatever? Do we wait until many Americans are hurt by right-wing policies? How we rid ourselves of these meddlesome thugs and a Republican Party that has gone off the rails requires us to think deeply but quickly about strategies that will end this coup decisively and permanently. If Trump allows the Republican Party to survive, will it have to be defeated if we are to avoid becoming an autocracy. What will take its place?