Why the Republican Party Needs to Be Voted Out of Existence... And Just May Be

 

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Bipartisanship often doesn't make headlines. With rare exceptions, as with McCain-Feingold, who'd spearheaded an important piece of legislation aimed at campaign finance reform, bipartisanship doesn't grab a lot of ink, doesn't get people excited. Nonetheless, bipartisan legislation such as McCain-Feingold are often not only important but even necessary. Back in his day, John McCain was the poster boy for conservatism in the Senate and Russ Feingold his exact analog. And if those two could come together to reform campaign financing, then anything's possible, right?

    So you'd think that Republicans, being the stealth legislators they historically are (witness the debacle in the run up to the passage of the odious USA PATRIOT Act), would want to continue flying under the radar. But lately, that hasn't been their style. They're flying their freak flags in the middle of a hurricane of their making with the fervor and devotion of a suicide cult. Republicans are just one brain seizure away from turning into terrorists who want to die of suicide by cop.

     Look what happened just 24 hours ago in Nashville, Tennessee. In a stunning display of arrogance, racism and sheer political abuse, not to mention a violation of the First Amendment, Tennessee Republicans voted in mainly party line votes to expel two African American lawmakers, Justin Pearson and Justin Jones, for staging a brief and mild protest in an attempt to protest gun violence and to highlight the need for meaningful gun control. They were joined by Gloria Johnson, a white woman, who narrowly survived her turn at the block by one vote. This means, obviously, that the state that proudly hosted the founding of the KKK in 1865 expelled just the black men. It may prove to be a pointless effort, as both lawmakers could easily be reinstated through local commissions.

     But Republicans these days, especially in this Glorious Age of Trump, are no longer interested in subtle and furtive. Far from their old personas and predecessors who excelled in duplicitous and secretive rat fuckery, today's GOP seems obsessed with challenging norms of political behavior, just daring anyone to oppose them. And, up to a point, there's a valid rationale for that.

    Time and again, Republicans have been subverting the will of the very people who put and keep them in power. Last night's debacle in Nashville was just the latest iteration of that. Pearson and Jones were, until last night, elected officials. Expelling them from the lower chamber was a gross overreach of authority that was not justified in the least by their majority.

     Anyone who knows just the bullet points of the GOP's regressive history knows that this is barely a crossing of the Rubicon. Nearly a year ago, a poll found that 70% of Americans favored the passage of meaningful gun control. This was less than two weeks after Uvalde and with every school shooting, the percentage supporting gun control seems to inch up.

     But Republicans these days seem outright contemptuous of the vox populi, especially when they don't get their way. Witness Scott Walker's whining about the alleged brainwashing of Generation Z that's fast turning into a political force to be reckoned with. Pearson is 29 and Jones is 26, therefore firmly in that demographic. And, if the young protesters, many of them students, inside and outside the House chamber were any indication, they were listening. In real time.

Who Judges the Judges?

This week, Judge Janet Protasiewicz won a seat on the state Supreme Court, giving liberals a majority for the first time in 15 years. Almost immediately, Republicans in the Badger State vowed to have her impeached. If you know your Wisconsin history, you'll know that a sitting State Supreme Court justice hasn't been impeached since 1853 (sans conviction), the year they abolished the death penalty. But, as PBS Wisconsin states, dislodging a Supreme Court Justice isn't as simple as all that. It would involve a mutilation of a 1971 law specifying the requirements for impeaching a Supreme Court Justice, which would be gross dereliction of duty such as corruption, or a physical or mental impairment that would prevent the jurist from fulfilling their duties.

    It brought with it that sickening smell of partisanship that began wafting out of Madison in 2018. That year, before incoming governor, Tony Evers, could even move into the Governor's Mansion, Republican scum already began passing legislation designed to undercut his powers. Forget the fact that Evers had handily beaten Scott Walker. And forget the fact that Protasiewicz defeated crypto Nazi David Kelly by over 200,000 votes.

    And if you don't have to worry about the will of the people, you can afford to fill up on hyper partisan courage. A special senate election favoring Dan Knodl, whose very name is a loud, vibrating echo right out of the Third Reich, gave Republicans in the state senate a super majority, which is the threshold for impeachment.

     Wisconsin voters may already be getting sticker shock.

    Wisconsin, don't forget, is also the same state that passed an abortion-restricting bill that's straight out of Gilead. As proof that Republicans are permanently time-warped in the 19th century, Republicans clung like grim death to an abortion law that was originally passed in 1849 that Tony Evers had vetoed, part of a long series of such vetoes going back to 2019.

     But as regards abortion, Republicans won't be able to impeach their way out of trouble this time. As I've stated in this byline, Republicans are shocked, shocked that Americans are so virulently opposed to their nonstop efforts to restrict abortion. And yet, they just can't stop stepping on that third rail that will, if anything, be more of a death trap for Republicans in 2024 than it was in 2022.

     And it's not enough to say that Republicans are some of the stupidest people on earth, which they are. Their single-minded agenda in all matters are predicated on a bloated sense of entitlement that often runs counter to the will of the people. And what we're seeing with Judge Protasiewicz and all their reckless loose talk of impeaching her is of the same mindset that led to Georgia recently passing a law that would allow crooked, hyper-partisan Republicans to remove legal officials like Fani Willis in Fulton County from doing their job, especially if their job involves chasing after crooked, hyper-partisan Republicans like them.

     But Georgia became one of those swing states when it was taken by Joe Biden in 2020, then weeks later when they elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate then again when Warnock was reelected. Voters are paying attention and they're voting with their hearts and minds. And, if that turns into a national movement, Republicans will eventually impeach, Handmaid and purge their way into oblivion.