We get the government we deserve PJ O’Rourke
My Mick cousin PJ is right, we get the government we deserve. And never has this been more true than when you look at the current state of the Republican party in this country. The party is literally imploding in on itself, and it’s a totally self inflicted gunshot wound.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever noticed that the Democratic party doesn’t have any Laborious MTG’s. Or Jim Jordan’s, or Louie Gohmert’s, or Matt Gaetz’s running around on Capitol Hill? Yeah, we have our problem children, but it’s the ordinary, everyday, garden variety corruption and personal failings. What we don’t have is drooling morons running around spouting off insane conspiracy theories and making idiots of themselves.
Why is this? Why is it that the Democrats somehow or other manage to keep electing competent representatives while the GOP ends up with a caucus of mouth breathers and Matawan refugees?
It all comes down to one simple thing. The Primaries. Democrats take the primaries seriously. Granted, Democratic primary voting is low, but the voters are paying attention. A couple of years ago, long time incumbent Eliot Engel got his head handed to him for getting lazy and complacent. But his replacement didn’t run around screaming at people to not let the government fluoridate their water! She just had better ideas, more energy, and put the shoe leather into the district. And that was about as safe of a Democratic district that you can imagine.
The Republican party is bone lazy. They have been sliding towards the precipice of minority rule for a decade or so now, and have come to depend on the wonders of gerrymandering to make sure that they can continue to control at least the House even if they can’t win popular votes. You should know what I’m about to say next. Familiarity breeds contempt. If you’re a GOP voter, and you know that come November, a Republican is going to be elected, who cares who the candidate is? So, you just sit out the primary, and end up with a general election like Matt Gaetz. And since he’s the candidate, that’s who you vote for, even though you think he’s a moron.
And I’m not just spouting off bullshit here, I have empirical proof. Following the election of He Who Shall Not Be Named in 2016, in the off year Virginia state elections of 2017, the Democrats tried a new approach. More than 1/3 f the Virginia legislature was made up of Republicans that had historically run unopposed. In 2017, the Virginia Democrats had a name on every legislative spot on the ballot. And they came within a coin toss of making the Virginia House a 50-50 institution. They did that by giving voters in the district an actual choice that they hadn’t had in years.
When Trump was first nominated, and then elected in 2016, mainstream Republicans were horrified. How had this happened to their party? And when Trump immediately set out to make the entire party subservient to him, they rebelled. And how did they rebel? They left the GOP in droves, becoming either Democrats or more likely independents.
Lazy fucks. They all had the key in their hands all along. Instead of copping a mope and running from the GOP, what those voters needed to do was to energize with revulsion, show up en masse in the primaries, and defeat the Trombie incumbents and candidates right there and then. Send sane conservatives to the congress instead.
This is the final wake up call for the GOP before either the destruction of their party, or the destruction of democracy. Get your lazy asses off of the sofa, go reregister as Republicans, and then show up in the primaries to send idiots like MTG and Matt Gaetz back to private life. Maybe I’m a moron, but I can’t believe that the actual majority of voters in those districts actually enjoy having these Trumptards representing them.
It’s your party. It’s your call. But it’s time to either shit or get off of the pot. Negative Trump ads are great, but getting back into the fight at the local level, and turfing these assholes out in the primaries is what will turn the tide. It might well cost you 2024, but it will save your party. Tick-Tock.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
They’re afraid of the MAGAts who win in the primaries and frequently lose in the generals. Those are real crazies, who threaten their opponents in both parties until they quit. (That’s how MTG got elected.) I’d bet a lot of the voters are afraid of those candidates, also.
O’Rourke stole and bastardized an old H.L Mencken quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
He also said: As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
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The tea party movement gave them a blueprint of how to go about this and accomplish it. I agree, the vast majority of them most likely are not tRumpers.