My wife is a Vassar-educated attorney, but she is not active in politics, and it never dawned on her just what in the hell G. O. P. stood for. (Well, we all know what Republicans stand for, but as far as the acronym goes, GOP was a mystery to her).
(Of course she didn’t know that the stars on the elephant symbol are upside-down pentangles either.)
When I told her it means Grand Old Party, it all made sense.
Grand Old Party does not make me think of Lincoln or the end of slavery. It does not matter how the Republicans started, because of who they have become.
Grand Old Party evokes the antebellum South, the Kentucky Colonel sipping a mint julep, a Yankee prejudice that makes me think of a guy with a Foghorn Leghorn accent, saying things like, “I say, I say, I say….that Jawjah boy. What was his name?”
Grand Old Party makes me envision proud people who own other people, flying Confederate flags outside their homes, talking about stopping the War of Northern Aggression.
Grand Old Party makes me think of lynch mobs and torture-fests, all in the name of what again?
Grand Old Party makes me think of red-faced spackled elites, sweating in Savannah, while middle-aged black men in immaculate white suit coats and freshly-pressed black trousers with a perfect crease, serve them iced tea with their white gloves. Waitstaff like that could never ever be n’s.
Grand Old Party makes me think of Paula Deen.
Grand Old Party makes me think of Mitch McConnell’s mush-mouth and dewlap, and Haley Barbour’s good ol’ boys that fought the Klan.
It should.
G.O.P. stands for all of that.
Thank you for reading my GOP rant. I think I just had my fill of racist seditious assholes this week...