The Republican Party stands on the edge of a cliff. It has been brought to this moment of supreme hazard by the complete failure of its leadership, at both the national and state levels. On this past Saturday, March 21st, 2009, a Republican member of Congress called for armed violence by Republicans against their fellow Americans, and against their democratically elected government. Is the Republican Party committing itself to sedition?
Representative Michele Bachmann (Republican - Minnesota) had this to say on a radio show on this past Saturday:
“I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.”
Representative Bachmann has crossed a line: she is openly advocating for armed insurrection, for civil war and violence against Americans by their fellow Americans. Is this the official policy of the Republican Party? Where are the disavowals from Republican leaders?
Should someone act on this exhortation--and God knows there are hundreds of thousands of angry, disillusioned Republicans being fed a steady diet of violent right-wing rhetoric--should some Republican activist finally decide to resort to violence after being bombarded by Republican-sponsored hate speech, then it would mark the end of the Republican Party as a political movement. From that moment the government would be fully justified in treating the Republican Party as a clear and present danger to the United States.
The leadership of the Republican Party should have required Bachmann to retract her comments and make an abject apology to the American people. The problem is that the Republican Party lacks principled or effective leadership. The very idea of Representative Eric Cantor (Republican - Virginia) enforcing discipline and discouraging extremism is ridiculous. The milquetoast Cantor was unable to even keep his party together in a recent vote to tax AIG's bonuses to employees paid with taxpayer bailout money. The Republicans in the House split right down the middle, with Cantor and roughly half of the Republican caucus voting to raise taxes, while the other half voted to maintain Republican orthodoxy and defend the payment of millions of taxpayer dollars to wealthy people who were partly responsible for destroying our nation's economy.
The Republican Party today really is like an out of control ship without a captain. The ship is about to run onto the rocks, but there is no one in the Republican Party with the skill, courage, or leadership to turn the ship from its fatal path.
You can read more about this story and hear an audio recording of Representative Bachmann's sedition at Think Progress.