I used to dislike Rubin a lot when she was supporting Mitt Romney in 2012 and generally blasting Democrats and sniping at Barack Obama his entire presidency (and after). But I’ve watched her over the last few years go from being a GOP loyalist to lamenting to resisting to rejecting what it has become. This morning’s latest column (she is writing several a day now) basically calls for extinction of the GOP: The 2020 choice for ex-Republicans
Almost four years ago I checked out of the Republican Party, recognizing that the moral rot, intellectual dishonesty and authoritarian tendencies that led it to embrace President Trump were a threat to our democracy. Events since then have proved my initial assessment horribly accurate.
That column she references was written back in May 2016, when she was still trying to save Republicans. Here’s how she concluded then:
For heaven’s sake, get rid of Trump and get his cult followers out of their trance. No more excuses for bad behavior, and no more pretending we can hide from the rest of the world. Then let’s talk, maybe in December. By then you should have plenty of free time.
Back then she still had some hopes for the GOP. She was deluding herself (and she still thinks Romney hung the moon), but now she has no use at all for the GOP. Here’s more of what she says now:
At the precipice of a vote to willfully ignore compelling evidence of Trump’s impeachable acts and with a frightful conviction that anything the president does to seek his own reelection is legitimate, Republicans have fully transformed themselves into an authoritarian cult.
And Moscow Mitch (not that she uses the term) needs to go, too:
A Republican Senate under the auspices of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is a lawless, amoral and destructive body. It has made clear that fairness, truth and the Constitution are subordinate to the exercise of raw power and the population of the judiciary with unqualified and partisan judges.
And while hopes for a “moderate Democrat nominee,” she urges voting for the Democrat who gets the nod, any Democrat:
The necessity of dislodging, and yes, leveling the Trump Republican Party might require ex-Republicans to re-register to participate in primaries and caucuses. It might require them to vote for a progressive Democratic nominee with whom they have many policy disagreements. [emphasis in original]
She still thinks a progressive agenda would be bad for the country (she’s wrong, of course) and that Congress, even a Democratic one, won’t let that happen (hopefully, she’s wrong there too). But even that horror of horrors would be better than today’s GOP:
But first, the impeachment non-trial has made clear, the job of all patriotic and democratic-loving Americans requires we throw the constitutional arsonists out. All of them.
Give Rubin this much: she is a famous columnist with a national audience writing in a city that lives in fear of what Trump does to anyone who so much as refuses to kneel in his presence. Yet she writes that “A second Trump term would be disastrous” knowing that this (on top of all the other things she’s said about him) leaves her open to attack by a pr*sident about to become unleashed.
Give her credit for courage, at least.
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Additional note to respond to the various comments denouncing Rubin because she’s a once and possibly future opponent:
Obama said not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. That applies here.
You want perfection? You’re part of the wrong species. Human beings make mistakes, sometimes many mistakes. And sometimes after they’ve admitted them (which Rubin sort of did and sort of didn’t), they go back and do them again. That doesn’t mean you have to reject and dismiss them when they are doing the right thing.
You want purity? Purity is a cult thing, just what (as Rubin said) what the GOP has become, the cult of Trump. Purity is for religious fanatics, the ones who sentence you to hell for making the sign of the cross left to right instead of right to left. The ones who scream “traitor!” because you voted with them 99% of the time and not 100%. I study the history of religion; I see this all the time. I don’t like seeing it here.
We now return you to our regular rant.