Republicans long have acted as if they were entitled to at least govern if not to rule. That entitlement is a matter of religious fervor for some and of ideological fervor for others. It extends even to the rank and file. For old-school Republicans, though, entitlement always has been a matter of wealth conferring privilege and license. What’s been missed is the willingness of Republicans to enforce their entitlement.
Our politics has been susceptible to the rationalization of means by ends since at least the election of 1800, when Jefferson had lies spread against John Adams. Both parties have, at times, fully embraced the mud and the muck and more, but differences are emerging. Democrats turn up the heat so a debate opponent looks sweaty or get a campaign train to pull out the station while the candidate still is speaking. Today’s Republicans steal elections though violence and abuse of office while quashing the voting rights of Democratic constituents. Open appeals to racism fill in any cracks. Consider the following.
1933 Wall Street attempts a coup d’état against Franklin Roosevelt. In 1933, Sen. Henry D. Hatfield, Republican of West Virginia, wrote of Roosevelt’s policies, "This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty.” To restore the natural order of wealth, then, “there was a genuine conspiracy to overthrow the president. The Wall Street Putsch, as it's known today, was a plot by a group of right-wing financiers.” It failed when the conspirators tried to enlist retired Marine general, Smedley Darlington Butler, who reported them to Congress for treason.
1952 J. Edgar Hoover brings the power of the FBI to the fight against Democrats. Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, is dogged by false rumors of homosexuality spread by Hoover’s agents. Additionally, a leaflet gets distributed claiming that, “in a jealous rage,” Stevenson had once killed a young girl.
1968 Richard Nixon sabotages Vietnam peace talks. President Lyndon Johnson halts the bombing of North Vietnam to facilitate peace talks. Richard Nixon secretly promises Nguyen Van Thieu, the President of South Vietnam, a better deal if he waits for a Nixon administration. Thieu pulls out, the negotiations fall through, and Nixon blames the Democrats. Johnson had been no stranger to dirty tricks, but Richard Nixon sacrificed countless lives, including those of thousands of American boys, to win an election.
1972 Nixon’s “plumbers” begin sabotaging his opponents. Late-night calls from rude “supporters” of the leading Democratic candidate mix with false stories, from the White House, of ethnic slurs. For all this, a Nixon operative, Donald Segretti, would serve 4 months in prison, but not before he could pass his legacy on to a 21 year-old Carl Rove. The Nixon legacy, though, still is Watergate, which eventually would lead to the conviction of 43 people and force Nixon to resign the presidency.
1980 Ronald Reagan opens his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, with a “ringing endorsement of “states’ rights.” The site was tiny and notable only for the 1964 murders of civil rights workers. Every white Southerner and more than a few white Northerners know exactly what Reagan’s choice of venue and his affirmation of “states’ rights” meant.
1980 Reagan has help in debate preparation. Before the only Carter-Reagan debate, a copy of Jimmy Carter’s debate prep-book finds its way to the Reagan camp. “During the subsequent debate, Reagan handled himself ably, delivering several witty rejoinders to Carter’s attacks ….” An FBI investigation was unable to name the thief.
1988 Under George H. W. Bush and Lee Atwater, The National Security Political Action Committee is created to provide deniability for racism. Bush The Elder releases the “Willie Horton commercial,” a political ad reeking of the racism from which it was created. Atwater gets Republican donors put up the ad via a front group.
1993 – Present A new think tank emerges: Citizens for a Sound Economy, “a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.” Its purpose: “to break Washington” and bend it to the will of the wealthy. Its most well-known product: The Tea Party. Tea Partiers routinely speak in terms of violence and of “second amendment” solutions.
1993 - 2001 Republicans nurture rumors against Bill Clinton: shady real-estate deals and even murder. They throw extended but pointless Senate investigations against him and, eventually, an independent counsel, the recently disgraced Kenneth Starr. Starr’s protracted investigation metastasized to several rumored scandals. Clinton was impeached by a Republican House but acquitted by the Senate.
2000 Compassionate conservatives George W. Bush and Karl Rove covertly allege in the South Carolina primary, against one of their own, against a war hero, that Senator John McCain had a black “love child.” They also suggested that McCain had mental problems. Rove turned out to be a master of the mud and muck and worse from 1970 to 2007.
2000 Bush The Younger, in a recount fight with Al Gore in Florida, decides not to leave it to the electorate. The “Republican Party used its national infrastructure to organize a protest,” using paid operatives, with the goal of “shutting down the recount.” The protestors included staff members of Republican Congressmen. They were sufficiently disruptive to end the recount. Many protestors “went on to land positions in the Bush administration.”
2000 The Bush v. Gore recount becomes irrelevant when a Republican, Supreme Court majority says don’t bother restarting it.
2004 War hero John Kerry is the target of George W. Bush and Carl Rove in a campaign of smears and lies. Add “swift boating” to Republican campaign tactics.
2008 – Present A rumor campaign against Barack Obama says he is foreign born and a Muslim. It is Bill Clinton all over again: a blatant attempt to delegitimize the presidency of a Democrat.
2009 – Present Republicans urge their base to “take back your country.” It is a slogan dripping with racism against the first African-American President and an explicit claim of their entitlement.
2010 A Republican, Supreme Court majority gives their Party the gift of unlimited funding in Citizens United.
2010 Republican gains at the state level are used to gerrymander safe congressional districts for themselves so blatantly that some are struck down by courts.
2011 A Republican splinter-group, The Tea Party, risks a government default to force President Obama’s hand, resulting in the disastrous sequestration of 2013.
2012 Republicans use multiple forms of voter intimidation (including real vote fraud) against President Obama.
2012 – Present Republicans use rumor campaigns and a shameless abuse of Congressional power to damage Hillary Clinton politically.
2013 A Republican, Supreme Court majority strikes down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing Republicans, in states they control, to disenfranchise blocks of typically Democratic voters. Republicans undertake this egregious dismantling of democracy with glee.
2016 Antonin Scalia dies in February. Mitch McConnell and the Republicans decide that they will not even hear of let alone confirm a new appointment to the Court — because Obama is a Democrat.
That brings us to the current, sorry campaign in which, despite the common wisdom, Trump is no anomaly; he is a continuation. Bush and Rove twice felt comfortable demeaning war heroes. Trump probably figured attacking John McCain would bring the entire Republican establishment on board. Nancy Pelosi has said that “"None of the things that he [Trump] has said that members of Congress haven't said over and over again on the Republican side."”
This campaign has been documented ad nauseam on this site, so I will not address particulars further. Nor will I include underhanded or even illegal activity at the congressional level, the state level, the township or country level, or the city level, levels that are more susceptible to anti-democracy treachery. It is not necessary.
Looking back, the assault on Bill Clinton was a policy announcement. It was the Republican Party proclaiming not only its entitlement to rule but its intent to enforce that entitlement. Republicans did everything they could to destroy the Democratic interloper, and they would apply this policy routinely in the future. All the filth that Republicans have thrown at President Obama, that they have thrown at and continue to throw at Hillary Clinton, is part of that: deny Democrats either election or legitimacy if elected, and do so by any means.
In the same way, the temporary shut-down of the government by Newt Gingrich and House Republicans under Bill Clinton was an announcement of a new Republican policy: refusal even to govern if it means cooperating with a Democrat. It would be reprized under President Obama. And just sixteen years ago, the Republicans stole a presidential election using first violence and then abuse of office. This is their policy. They are entitled, and they will enforce that entitlement.
We get so caught up in day-to-day politics, mundane policy squabbles, that it is easy to forget what has been done and what is being done. Imagine the Republican House and the Republican Senate joined by a Republican President – any Republican president, not just Trump. Does anyone think that the power grabs that Republicans have been refining at the state and local level would not be attempted at the federal level, with far deeper infiltration and longer lasting effect? And at what point do such power grabs become de facto irreversible?
How much more do we need to see? Are not attempted coups, sabotaging peace negotiations, cavalierly causing the deaths of thousands, break ins and thefts, open appeals to racism, violent interference in elections, abuse of Congressional power, abuse of Judicial power, voter intimidation, calls for violence against candidates and voters, and the brazen, systematic, disenfranchisement of American voters enough of a pattern?
The press never will call them out. We have to. It’s a small step, but it’s a necessary first step without which nothing more will happen. If we at DKos can start the ball rolling, we may as well start now: what was the Republican Party now and henceforth is the Anti-Democracy Party.