THE REPUBLICAN PARTY DIED TONIGHT
The Republican Party (July 4, 1854 - February 5, 2024) died tonight. The party my great great grandfather Peter Alexander Cleaver, lifelong Quaker Abolitionist and Conductor on the Underground Railroad, helped found in the state of Pennsylvania; the party that seventh-generation Quaker believed in enough to allow his son, Alem, to leave the church Cleavers had been members of since 1660 - 20 years after its founding - in order to go and fight for that cause the party championed, that Cleavers had believed in since 1688: that no one had a right to own anyone as property, and fight in a war for those principles; the party that won that war Alem returned from at age 21, unrecognizable from the youth who had gone to fight for Abolition.
That party no longer exists.
In truth, that part of the Republican Party Peter and Alem believed in and fought for died 44 years ago, when Ronald Reagan announced his campaign for president in 1980 by going to Philadelphia, MS, the KKK town that had in 1964 killed Peter’s and Alem’s spiritual descendants - James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - where Reagan proclaimed his belief in “states rights,” words that meant complete opposition to everything Peter and Alem had believed in and risked their lives for, because he needed the votes of The Enemy who would hear them loud like a trumpet, in order to win an election he would not have won otherwise.
But tonight the party founded to extend human freedom and opportunity surrendered to a man who is the personal embodiment of everything Peter Cleaver and his fellow Founders opposed with all their might back in 1854. Rather than believe in and promote human freedom and opportunity (as even in such a limited way as those who led the party over the 160 years since the Civil War understood those words), the Republican Party now is willing to believe in and promote whatever Donald Trump tells them to believe. The Republican Party of history fell on its sword in the old Roman manner, while those who had profited from its existence celebrated its death as it lay there drowning in its own blood while they laughed.
Tonight Mitch McConnell, a man I have disageed with on many things, a man who sacrificed all his original principles and all of his political talent in the cause of retaining power regardless, the last Republican leader left to stand in opposition to Trump, surrendered and bent his knee to the would-be dictator. It’s a moment up there with Marcus Antonius surrendering to Gaius Caesar after the Battle of Actium. But there was no pomp as happened then, no recognition of power passing irrevocably to the man who would be Caesar Augustus, destroyer of the Roman Republic.
Give the man his due, McConnell stood his ground to the last moment, when all around him fell away and he saw that he stood alone in his desire to support the people of Ukraine, while the rest of the party that once defined itself by its opposition to the Red Czars of the Soviet Union swore their allegiance to the Black Czar of Russia, Vladimir Putin and his tool, Donald Trump.
McConnell spenTHE GOP PUBLICLY CELEBRATES BEING INADEQUATE ASSHOLESt today seeking to find 12 fellow Republican senators who would join him in voting for the bipartisan bill that enacted the reforms in administration of the southern border in return for an appropriation of aid to Ukraine. The majority of the Senate GOP - the 31 who had already pledged themselves to the would-be dictator - were already following the would-be dictator’s orders to kill the bill in order to give him a phony “issue” to use against Joe Biden in the presidential campaign. But if 12 of the 17 other Republican Senators who had not yet bent their knee to the would-be dictator would join him, McConnell believed he and Democratic Senator Schumer could muster the 60 votes needed to defeat the filibuster that would be brought at the vote this coming Wednesday, that there was still a chance to keep his word to Ukraine.
In the end, there were none of the other 17 who were willing to face the ginned-up roar of the howling red-hatted mob that their voters back home had become, to put themselves and their families at risk of death by publicly defying the would-be dictator with such participation in that public vote.
And so the last of the old Republicans, who was still acknowledged the Senate leader of the party, recognized his defeat and bent the knee. He told the rest of the Senate Republicans that they should vote against the bill he had fought to create, “because the country has changed.” That part of the country he had recognized as his country.
After tonight, there is no one who calls themself a Republican leader who has not voluntarily entered into thrall to Donald Trump, no one who will refuse whatever order he gives them.
Most of the Americans who call themselves Republicans don’t even know the death of their party has happened; and none who do know cares anything about the event.
But in the history of the New Rome - as its founders thought of themselves - tonight is important. It will be remembered in the years to come.
Sic transit gloria.
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I am no hawk, but from the moment Putin's army lined up at the border and insisted they were just there for exercises, I believed we needed to be ready to hit that invasion hard. When we played around sending our out dated equipment, and not enough of that, and when we refused to send planes or several of the most effective items on Ukraine's need list, I believed we were missing an opportunity to stop Russia before they got further, dug in, wore Ukraine's infrastructure down... It's like we just gave Ukraine enough to defend themselves but not enough to win. I read that the cost of American support to Ukraine was about what Americans spend on junk food in a year. We had no sense of proportion. And now we are dropping them on their asses in their hour of greatest need.
I read a fascinating analysis that said Ukraine started off well because they innovate from the bottom up and innovations spread as the advantages are recognized, but that innovations are recognized across the battle lines as well and are spread from the top down in the Russian military. Top down innovation is less nimble and effective, but more quickly applied. As the shock of discovering themselves less potent than they imagined has worn off the Russian military system, the strategically more effective top down approach coupled with more intact increasingly more militarized infrastructure has gained over the more innovative bottom up approach which had the initial tactical advantage.
It has been said before that either we fight Russia with Ukrainian blood and American arms, or we fight it later with American blood and American arms, at much higher costs. What is not usually said is that we will also be fighting a better trained, hardened reorganized Russian army outfitted with updated equipment and many hard learned lessons in modern warfare. When you fight an infection you take your full dose for the full course of the prescription. When you take a half dose and quit before the full ten days, you risk breeding a super bug. I'm afraid that is what we are doing now. We are breeding a super bug to unleash on our children. It scares me, it saddens me, and it makes me furious.
A long slow agonizing death. As always, Tom, a well crafted essay. We better start swimin' or we'll sink like a stone, because the times they are......