With the release of the Mueller report, it is quite clear that Donald Trump has obstructed justice and lied to the American people, and, while there are no definitive links between Russia and his campaign, it is pretty clear that Russia helped him and his campaign, and that the Republican Party does not care.
The pursuit of power at any cost has consumed the Republican Party. It seems as if power is all it cares about. It does not care if you receive medical care, it does not care if you receive an education (it would prefer you don’t). What it does care about is making sure that taxes on the rich and on large corporations stay low, not because it believes the wealth will trickle down, but because it will allow its benefactors to increase the wealth they already have. Which is why Donald Trump will likely not face justice until he is out of office. Mitch McConnell would never let a Republican President be convicted by the Senate, even if there was no doubt about his guilt.
Mitch McConnell is the real cancer on our country. He has done more than anyone to make the U.S. Senate the most nonfunctioning governmental body we have seen in our history. This has been evident since 2010, when he uttered the words, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He then went on to obstruct everything that President Obama tried to do, including judicial appointments—capped off with preventing Merrick Garland from receiving even so much as a hearing toward his confirmation to a seat on the Supreme Court.
With the House now run by a newly empowered Democratic majority, McConnell has doubled down on his hatred for anything slightly left of his extreme right-wing views.
"If I'm still the majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of those things are going to pass the Senate," the Kentucky Republican told a small crowd during an event in his home state Monday. "They won't even be voted on. So think of me as the Grim Reaper: the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn't land on the president's desk."
The Green New Deal, wiping out student-loan debt, making college affordable, fixing our infrastructure—none of these things is socialism. “Socialism” is a meaningless word to Republican politicians, who just use it as red meat for the Republican faithful—who in all honesty would not know what socialism was if it snuck up behind them and slapped them on the ass.
On October 10, 1952, at a campaign stop in Syracuse, New York, Harry S. Truman said,
Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.
Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.
Socialism is what they called farm price supports.
Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.
Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.
Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.
When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan "Down With Socialism" on the banner of his "great crusade," that is really not what he means at all.
What he really means is, "Down with Progress--down with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal," and "down with Harry Truman's fair Deal." That is what he means.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
To reiterate, ensuring a nation’s population has health care, public education, and safe and secure infrastructure is not now, nor has it ever been socialism. Mitch McConnell knows this, but he does not care. The only thing he cares about are the big-money donors to the Republican Party, keeping them happy with low or even nonexistent corporate taxes and low tax rates on the rich so the money will keep rolling in to the Republican Party. All he has to do is dangle social issues and the word “socialism” in front of the Republican base, and the votes and money keep coming.
We have real problems facing real people in this country. None of these problems will be solved by Donald Trump, and if Mitch McConnell stays in the Senate, he will obstruct everything the Democrats try and do. One thing I am certain of is that McConnell is not a fan of Trump, but Trump is the means to an end for McConnell. McConnell wants to remake the judiciary to lean conservative, and he is playing the long game for it to happen—and Trump? He is just McConnell’s useful idiot to attain that goal.