Czernobog
Gold Member
I do think there should be a strong, healthy opposition party to keep Democrats honest. I don’t think we’re always right, or that government can fix everything. I don’t want our foreign policy to go unchallenged, or our party to become the caricature depicted by some on the right and the left: corporatist, elitist, corrupt, and out of touch. But the Republican Party can’t serve as a healthy opposition right now, because the Republican Party is no longer a functioning institution. Indeed, the most consequential truth of this entire nightmare of an election is that in 2016, the party of Lincoln and Reagan facilitated the nomination of an unstable demagogue for president of the United States.
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After George W. Bush left office with a near–30 percent approval rating, the party’s centre of power and influence shifted from elected officials to media activists like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the Breitbart crew, who kept their audiences enraged with a business model based on grievance, resentment, and bizarre conspiracies. They didn’t just target Democrats, but any Republican who even contemplated compromising with Democrats, a sin that often led to a primary challenge.
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Republican Senator Chuck Grassley made a big show of wanting to compromise on the Affordable Care Act. When months of negotiations and multiple concessions to Republicans went nowhere, the president asked Grassley, “Is there any form of health-care reform that you can support?” He admitted, “Probably not.”
Electing Hillary Isn’t Enough---
After George W. Bush left office with a near–30 percent approval rating, the party’s centre of power and influence shifted from elected officials to media activists like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the Breitbart crew, who kept their audiences enraged with a business model based on grievance, resentment, and bizarre conspiracies. They didn’t just target Democrats, but any Republican who even contemplated compromising with Democrats, a sin that often led to a primary challenge.
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Republican Senator Chuck Grassley made a big show of wanting to compromise on the Affordable Care Act. When months of negotiations and multiple concessions to Republicans went nowhere, the president asked Grassley, “Is there any form of health-care reform that you can support?” He admitted, “Probably not.”
The very same Freedom Caucus that forced John Boehner into a government shut-down when he publicly expressed a desire for a "grand compromise" over taxes, and spending, then forced him out over his "party betraying blasphemy", are now making rumblings of outing Paul Ryan for his "betrayal of Trump".
This is the new reality. What should be a strong party of opposition, and challenge to compromise has become a party in fear of its own base, and a party of inaction, obstruction, and stagnation. Anyone who thinks that a Republican Congress will act as a responsible counter-balance to the Presidency hasn't been paying attention to the last 6 years. Remember this is the party that forced Marco Rubio to vote against his own immigration reform legislation out of fear of being primaried if he was perceived as "working with Obama, and Democrats".
If there was any doubt that the next four years will be the same, one need only consider the words of John McCain - "I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton … would put up." - followed by Ted Cruz musing that an indefinite hold on a Supreme Court Justice is a doable thing. This is a Republican Party that is already talking about challenging the legitimacy of a Clinton Presidency: "To hold on to their congressional majorities, Republicans should promise voters they’ll impeach Hillary by 2018." Again this sentiment is being echoed by Mark Levin.
Electing Trump may solve the existential problem of Trump, but, in order to break the stranglehold that the extremists have on the Republican Party, we need to break the party's hold on Washington, at all levels, and give the rational, reasonable leaders of the classic party of opposition time to reclaim control of their party.
