Every day I turn on MSNBC and watch the various hosts work themselves up into a frenzy over the Republicans’ increasingly deplorable behavior.
“They are killing democracy,” laments one talking head, “They are impugning the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency,” moans another. “Why don’t the congressional Republicans have the spine to denounce this nonsense?” says pretty much all of them. While they’re not wrong, their shock and surprise are fairly puzzling.
Republicans, both electeds as well as the rally goers and voters, are indeed guilty of all of those things and much more, but this should hardly be news to anyone who’s been alive at least since Bill Clinton was president. Republicans have openly been the party of hate, obstruction, conspiracy theories, personal attacks and obfuscation for as long as I can remember. They didn’t suddenly develop those traits when trump became president, they’ve been working on perfecting them for years.
Who can forget the allegations that Bill Clinton had an illegitimate, half black child, that he and Hillary murdered Vince Foster, or that they ran a cocaine and sex ring while he was governor of Arkansas. Not only did no congressional Republicans come forward to say they didn’t believe these ridiculous stories, they gleefully helped fuel the rumors. The cult of Republican hate aimed at the Clintons was so pervasive and destructive, it remained unmatched until Obama was elected.
Barack Hussein Obama. Now here was someone Republicans could really love to hate. Tall, athletic, handsome, smart, articulate and of course, black, he was the walking, talking embodiment of their worst fears and nightmares. As he was celebrating his inauguration, and at the height of the worst recession since the great Depression, congressional Republicans were meeting to plot how they would destroy him and his presidency, not how to save the country.
Rank and file Republicans were posting ugly racist rants and cartoons, with which elected Republicans either tacitly agreed or turned a blind eye. What was birtherism if not the cornerstone of Republican resistance and rejection of Barack Obama? Did elected Republicans come forward to denounce it as unacceptable and untrue?
They did not. The best they could do was say in public that they didn’t know if Obama had been born in the United Stats, and then get caught on video at their fundraisers joking about sending Obama back to Kenya. For the entire eight years of Obama’s presidency, congressional Republicans not only obstructed every one of his legislative policies, they supported the worst, ugliest, slurs and charges against him and his family with either their silence or their thinly masked encouragement.
Elected Republicans who failed to be quite malignant enough were soon purged from the party and replaced by ideologues who were happy to pick up the cudgels of hate, bigotry and division. Elected Republicans showed clearly that they had no respect for either their sworn duty or the separation of powers when they refused to give Obama’s Supreme Court choice a hearing even though Obama still had almost a year left in his presidency.
Make no mistake, Donald Trump isn’t an aberration, he’s the pulled pin on the hand grenade Republicans have been threatening the country with for decades. He’s the tool they’ve used to secure power for themselves and the voting minority they represent. Over the past four years they’ve stopped pretending that their allegiance is to their office, their country or our Constitution. It certainly isn’t to protecting and preserving our democracy. We need to stop expressing our shock and disbelief that they’ve exposed themselves for who they really are and start figuring out just what the hell we’re going to do about it.