Republicans exposed by the Donald
By Michael Addai
This article was written about 5 years ago (Aug 14, 2016) when the Donald became the republican nominee for the US presidential elections in 2016. In the light of recent desperate attempts to cling onto power through cruel and foul means and the events that followed which shook the confidence of all admirers of liberal democracy all over the world that look up to U.S. for inspiration and assurance, I couldn’t help but share it again because it was true then and it’s even true now.
“It all began almost 8 years ago when it became clear that United States of America was going to have its first black president. Some elements in the U.S. society especially those in the Republican Party, disgruntled by that prospect, decided not to appreciate the collective memorable achievement of this great country, and thus felt threatened by this historic event.
Allegedly with this in mind, right on the day of the inauguration of the 44th president, a plot was hatched by the leadership of the Republican Party, led by Mitch McConnell, to ensure that the presidency of Barack Husain Obama was a failure. They decided to become a ‘Party of No’ i.e. saying no to virtually every policy proposal he made, even those ones that previously enjoyed bi-partisan support such as immigration, social security and criminal justice reforms.
With facilitation from Fox News and other conservative media outlets, the Republican Party leadership, without any concrete denunciation nor repudiation, implicitly encouraged pure racism with the following narratives:
The “birther” movement — that Obama wasn’t born in U.S. but in Kenya (incidentally this nonsense was well championed and propagated by Donald Trump); that Obama wasn’t a true Christian but a secret Muslim (and so what and what happened to the religious liberties?); that Obama was a liberal socialist dictator with Neo-Nazi tendencies (such confused ‘contortious’ contradictions); the emergence of the so-called tea-party movement which subtly pandered to racial stereotypes and ugly rhetoric; the over-promise to repeal Obamacare rather than reform it (one of the significant signature accomplishments of Obama’s presidency); and last but not least, the invitation of Benjamin Netanyahu (the Israeli prime minister) to Congress to denounce a sitting U.S. president just because of policy differences, the first time in the history of Congress to afford a foreign leader a platform to basically hurl insults at a sitting U.S. president (what was the motive here rather than an attempt to demean a black president).
All these culminated in the emergence of a narcissistic demagogue, the Donald. Donald Trump is a product of the nefarious shenanigans of the Republican Party leadership since Obama took office. The Donald is explicitly saying things that were hitherto spoken in private and in the comforts of one’s bedroom — he is essentially normalizing what used to be abnormal by sacrificing everything on the altar of political incorrectness. He is everything that Republicans claim to stand against and ironically what the leadership of the party and their miserable surrogates like Fox News accused President Obama of. Instead of denouncing and treating Donald Trump for what he really is, a racist thug who lacks any moral compass, they have decided to sell their conscience by putting career preservations, self and party interests before country for political expediency. All that at what cost and to what end, just to please their disillusioned base — some of whom still obviously can’t bear the thought that Obama is the president — and to perpetuate that racist perception that nothing good can come out of a black president?
Now the party of Lincoln that stood for compassionate conservatism, small government, fiscal discipline, free market, entrepreneurship, private ownership, strong military, internationalist foreign policy, treating others with respect, respect for life, individual freedom, liberty and responsibility, has become the party of hate led by a Republican nominee for president who is consciously being given credibility by the endorsement of the so-called principled leaders like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence and the rest of the Republican leadership e.g. Reince Priebus (another fool who rationalizes every nonsense from Trump). Their credibility is in tatters as they seek to support someone whom they profoundly disagree with and believe is clearly not qualified to hold the highest office of the land. Perhaps the Donald just seems God sent to expose the outrageous hypocrisy of their so-called conservatism as a cover for their deep-seated bigotry, and just to make fools out of these Bible-bashing evangelical charlatans.
In post-racial America, it’s said that an African American presidency has quite exposed the more quiescent racism than many expected, and probably the presidential nomination or presidency of a woman will bring out quiescent sexism as well. Unfortunately, the Republican nominee, a known misogynist, is already at it and unashamedly displaying his disdain and lack of respect for women.
It has been long time coming for the GOP, they’ve brought it upon themselves and now reaping what they helped to sow over the last years. There should be no rush to shed tears for them.”
So now, 12 years of scheming and ‘shitholing’ by this party has now ended up in an apparent coup d’état attempt in the United States of America of all places on this earth. This is what far right extremism, right-wing fundamentalism, radical right republican evangelical conservatism does to the minds of otherwise, supposedly, ‘very fine people’. Using religion and conservatism as a cover to hide away their dictatorial, authoritarian and tyrannical tendencies. Traitors for betraying the fine principles of law and order, rule of law and, more importantly, a great country. Treasonable!
As the saying goes, ‘Too much of everything is bad’.
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