The Emancipation of the Republican Party

The Grand Old Party has been renewed and refreshed for the new century.

No longer shackled by the weight of being called “The Party of Lincoln,” or faced with recruiting candidates with ethics, vision for improving America, or championing the rule of law or, hell, the constitution, the new GOP are free to be their true selves.

The republican has been emancipated.

The party has been emancipated from trying to even appear like a legitimate political party. They’ve been relieved of having to pretend to have Binders full of women and a platform to bring non-white people into the party.

Oh, they’ll still pull in a Black man from the fields like Herschel Walker, Tim Scott, or Byron Donalds, and use them to give the media a story that can use to mislead viewers and readers about diversity and outreach as a false comparison against the democratic party.

Clarence Thomas is the doorman to the big house who will greet his new Black friends.

And the new GOP will feed their white voters faux street cred by pushing washed up Black entertainers — Kanye, Killer Mike, etc., — who have zero influence or clout with Black voters but who make white republican voters feel cool in that way your sixty year-old uncle is cool when he leaves his wife, and shows his new tattoos and hair plugs when he returns from his Arizona trip with his twenty-year old iowaska instructor girlfriend.

The New GOP is now the party of Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, and George Anthony Santos-Devolder-Keyser Soze. They are now the most influential and powerful members of the party that worked so hard to elevate the best-worst politicians they could find and afford.

A newly emancipated GOP no longer has to pretend to even care about governing, helping seniors, kids, small businesses, law enforcement, or even the military. They got in office and let their authentic selves vote with their hearts.

Republicans are now free to realize their goals to dismantle the intelligence community, and defund the FBI.

I also find it.. odd that:

Defund the Police = losing message for Democrats

Defund the FBI = winning message for Republicans

The party is free to stop pretending to do outreach to Black or POC voters because they have been able to get a good chunk of non-Black POC voters to side with their anti-everything party.

The new GOP already stopped pretending to care about gas prices, farmers, CRT — Critical Race Theory or Black Ariel.

They are relieved to not have to worry about being politically correct, homophobic, anti-trans, or of their support for gay conversion therapy.

And they can loudly celebrate ending legal abortions while extending restrictions on what women wear. They can make mask wearing illegal and owning all the guns no matter your age fully legal.

The new republicans aren’t afraid to break the law, traffick underage girls, ask for pardons immediately after being elected, or brag that they would have completed the coup if they were in charge.

They can also finally be in charge of Homeland Security — which was formed following 9/11 — and have a person in charge who said 9/11 was a false flag conspiracy leading the committee.

What in the world happened to the republican party and who was in the room where it happened?

There are the usual suspects: Donald Trump, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and other foreign adversaries. And of course Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big White Supremacy, and Big White Nationalists.

But there are hundreds of millions more reasons. Seventy-three million republican voters who voted for Trump in 2020, and all the republican voters who supported all the aforementioned republicans who are in power now. They are the foundation that provides the power and to the party.

It is easier to look at the leaders of the party but they are given power by voters and for whatever reason, the vast majority of white voters overwhelmingly vote republican and have done so since the 1960’s.

None of the movements undertaken by Black folk, women, immigrants, lgbtqi, young people, workers, teachers, unions, seniors, homeless, small business, indigenous, or any other group has been able to persuade most white voters to move away from republicans and the republican party.

Nothing has worked. Not deaths of babies, lynchings, bombings of churches, shooting up schools, churches, grocery stores, or office buildings. Not domestic terrorism like bombing government buildings, mass shootings, science, affirmative action, desegregation, intermarriage, mix children, or that one Black friend.

Nothing, it appears, can separate most white people from supporting the republican party.

There is something profoundly frustrating about that last sentence. And profoundly sad.

It is frustrating because on one hand we have tried and are trying but we have been rebuffed for generations. Profoundly sad because we can see the damage white allegiance to the republican party has done and is doing to the planet, the nation, to us and….to white people who are not super wealthy.

But the rest of us can’t care more about white people than white people care about themselves. We can’t want peace and a better nation that matches its ideals more than white people. They have to want it as much as we do and unfortunately most do not and that harms us all.

And the people they elect reflect their disinterest in improving the country. the Gaetz’s, Taylor Greene’s, and Boebert’s are in office to exact revenge, harm real people and groups, and tear down government in any and every way they can and doing so with the approval of millions of white people.

My neighbors and yours are not really interested in peaceful coexistence. Oh, they will tell you to your face that is exactly what they want. They will laugh with you at your kid’s soccer game, at work when you celebrate a great sales quarter or someone’s birthday, and at your neighborhood street party.

But when it is time to vote they will gladly vote for the party that works to harm you. That friend isn’t your friend. And that neighbor isn’t being neighborly. That neighbor and friend are supporting, encouraging, and upholding white supremacy.

They aren’t wearing a hood or burning a cross. They aren’t bombing a church or a synagauge. No, they are chatting on NextDoor, sharing anti-government memes on Facebook, and trolling your Twitter account.. before inviting you over for a backyard bbq or to see their new Christ-centered Christmas decorations.

Glory be to white Jesus, I guess.

They are biding their time until their party gets all the power and unleashes their vision of hate and ugliness on those who aren’t like them.

That time may not ever come, we know.

But just the fact that so many actually want it to come, despite all that we’ve learned over the past few hundred years, despite all that we’ve witnessed since the 1950’s, 1960’s, through the tough 1970’s-90’s, and the advances we’ve partaken in since the 2000’s — despite the proof that a diversity of thoughts, of people, of ideals — is not only the right thing to do, but the healthiest and safest things to do, a significant and majority of white voters reject all of it.

Again, that is profoundly disturbing, sad, infuriating, and disheartening.

Not every story has a happy ending. Let’s hope the American story isn’t one of them.

© 2023 by Myron J. Clifton and Dear Dean Publishing. All Rights Reserved.

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Myron J. Clifton is slightly older than fifty, lives in Sacramento, California, and is an avid Bay Area sports fan. He likes comic books, telling stories about his late mom to his beloved daughter Leah, and talking to his friends.  

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