The Atlantic: Boycott the Republican Party

[TygrBright]

If conservatives want to save the GOP from itself, they need to vote mindlessly and mechanically against its nominees.

We have both spent our professional careers strenuously avoiding partisanship in our writing and thinking. We have both done work that is, in different ways, ideologically eclectic, and that has—over a long period of time—cast us as not merely nonpartisans but antipartisans. Temperamentally, we agree with the late Christopher Hitchens: Partisanship makes you stupid. We are the kind of voters who political scientists say barely exist—true independents who scour candidates’ records in order to base our votes on individual merit, not party brand.

This, then, is the article we thought we would never write: a frank statement that a certain form of partisanship is now a moral necessity. The Republican Party, as an institution, has become a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy. The problem is not just Donald Trump; it’s the larger political apparatus that made a conscious decision to enable him. In a two-party system, nonpartisanship works only if both parties are consistent democratic actors. If one of them is not predictably so, the space for nonpartisans evaporates. We’re thus driven to believe that the best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers, and of saving the Republican Party from itself, is to do as Toren Beasley did: vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).

***

So why have we come to regard the GOP as an institutional danger? In a nutshell, it has proved unable or unwilling (mostly unwilling) to block assaults by Trump and his base on the rule of law. Those assaults, were they to be normalized, would pose existential, not incidental, threats to American democracy.

Future generations of scholars will scrutinize the many weird ways that Trump has twisted the GOP. For present purposes, however, let’s focus on the party’s failure to restrain the president from two unforgivable sins. The first is his attempt to erode the independence of the justice system. This includes Trump’s sinister interactions with his law-enforcement apparatus: his demands for criminal investigations of his political opponents, his pressuring of law-enforcement leaders on investigative matters, his frank efforts to interfere with investigations that implicate his personal interests, and his threats against the individuals who run the Justice Department. It also includes his attacks on federal judges, his pardon of a sheriff convicted of defying a court’s order to enforce constitutional rights, his belief that he gets to decide on Twitter who is guilty of what crimes, and his view that the justice system exists to effectuate his will. Some Republicans have clucked disapprovingly at various of Trump’s acts. But in each case, many other Republicans have cheered, and the party, as a party, has quickly moved on. A party that behaves this way is not functioning as a democratic actor.

I have nothing to add. It's not a long article. But very worth reading and passing on.

grimly,
Bright

[triron]

1. kick for visibility

[pandr32]

2. Excellent read

Thanks for posting it.

[Wounded Bear]

3. A little late, I've been doing that for years, decades, actually...

[SWBTATTReg]

4. I think in a way this is already happening...

The GOP have lost their respectability and have proven that their ability to govern is nil, in their constantly
taking away from the many and giving to the few who already have so much, in this country.

They have been complaining about stuff so long, that when they finally came into power, they have shown their true colors, and contrary to what they have been preaching about forever, threw even those items that they held sacred (deficits, etc.) out the door along w/ the bath water.

They can't hide this, and there is no where to run, despite all of the money, despite all of the power. Their true nature is showing, and it is ugly.

The extended economic gains of the last economic boom after the disaster of the 2007-2008 have been
rechanneled/rerouted into the pockets of the 1%, via tax shelters, trust funds, tax scams (Panama papers), and a already very low long-term capital gains tax rate of 15% put in place by layers of tax lawyers and tax accountants by the thousands, all conspiring w/ their clients to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

When is enough, enough for these guys?

Wages are still, for the most part stagnant. Our daily expenses keep going up (businesses have received a big boon, so why?). The gains from the 2018 tax cut have been a joke for most of us. The only winners again are the 1%, the tax shelters, the trust funds, the legal tax scams, the tax lawyers and the tax accountants.

[Poiuyt]

7. It's not happening right now

What your post describes is what the Republican party has become. The authors of the Atlantic article acknowledge what you say, but also say that everyone needs to vote against the Republicans.

The trump cultists will support him no matter what. There is no crime or inadequacy that is too much for them. There are, however, a lot of moderate Republicans who vote that way because that's what they've always done. They are the ones who will need to hold their noses (in their opinion) and vote for the Democratic candidates. Only then will the Republicans boot out the trumpists.

[genxlib]

5. K&R

Definitely worth a read

[G_j]

6. K&R

[ribrepin]

8. I've been doing this since Reagon