It’s Not You, Democracy, It’s Them
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, attempting to demonstrate with his hands how far the GOP is from reality. His hands can’t go that wide.
Kevin McCarthy needs to see if he can rent back his balls from Donald Trump long enough to support the investigation into the January 6th insurrection. After all, it was negotiated by his own representative, signed off on by him, and was supposed to move forward. But now?
Now he doesn’t like it anymore.
Evidently, he got another friendly call from Mar-a-Largo because Donny doesn’t want an investigation. Of course he doesn’t. And now Kevin doesn’t either. Not anymore, anyway. Trump is against it, as is most of the GOP, because they are complicit; they supported it, they either went along with the lies that inspired the mobs, broadcasted the lies themselves, or said nothing and hoped it would go away like a bill that comes due when your bank account is empty.
If we just don’t answer the knocking, it’ll stop, they’ll just go away. But they didn’t. They came back with a battering ram, looking for blood. Not metaphorical blood, actual blood. McCarthy is guilty of going along, of trying to stop democracy, of voting to kill it before it threw his unpopular party and its equally unpopular president out of power. After a period of a day or so where they pretended regret, trying to see where political chips were going to fall, they’ve sprung back into ‘Big Lie’ mode, denying the insurrection and supporting Trump’s continued spewed lunacies.
The ‘Big Lie’ of the stolen election is now the Republican battleplan of taking power in DC and the states; keep telling your voters they were cheated, that they have actual grievances, that the election and their rightful president were stolen from them. Keep the base angry, seething, ready to storm the polling places and vote for anything Trump and the GOP tell them. Get them angry and near violence and keep them there.
Just not too angry and violent. It’s a subtle and deadly dance, like a replay of the classic French film ‘The Wages of Fear’, only this time it’s not truckers hauling degrading nitro, it’s the GOP playing with the nitro emotions and violence that their most extreme voters are capable of, both already on abundant display long before 1/6.
The Democrats must move ahead on the investigation, without the GOP. They will never cooperate anyway. Hell, they only regret the insurrection didn’t succeed, democracy be damned. A new CBS poll asked GOP voters that if they were a party consultant, would they focus on developing a message and “popular policies and ideas” to win over more voters? Or would they prioritize changes to the voting rules in states and districts?
Almost half the GOP, 47%, went with screwing voters, with making sure ‘those’ people don’t vote. You know, you and me. 2/3rds pledged loyalty to Trump, and thought getting rid of Liz Cheney, a far-right conservative who voted with Trump some 93% of the time, was a good idea. Not loyal enough. Insufficiently ready to steal coming elections.
They are done with democracy. It’s no longer giving them what they need. No, it’s not you, democracy, it’s them. Totally on them, they’re done, they want a divorce.
It’s now up to the Democratic Party to show that democracy can be saved, that it can work. The 1/6 investigation is needed to show the agenda of the GOP, to show the country where the rot is and how deep it goes. The Democrats will have to stop playing nice as usual, stop playing defense and start playing offense. Nancy and Chuck need to go it alone, while they still can.
2022 is coming at us like a freight train, we can hear its mournful whistle in the distance and soon it’ll be too late to get off the tracks.
We have to make sure we’re on that train and not in front of it.