You know, at this point, I’m honestly beginning to believe that even card carrying, duly elected GOP incumbents now believe that their party is dying. Because if they thought that they could honestly upgrade and save the party, then there is absolutely no excuse for what they’re doing right now. And what they’re doing right now goes well past political malpractice, and into total political dumbfuckery.
Keep this in mind. Whether you’re a US Representative, or a US Senator, you are still running in a specific state. And as such, at least a part of your campaign strategy is going to be determined by the local political winds in the state you’re running in. And already, at this early point, it is almost stunningly easy to see what the running parameters in 2022 are going to be in GOP dominated states.
Look, even the GOP knows the fact that the country is becoming younger, browner, and more liberal. The path to survival requires the party to update and reboot its agenda and platform, and make both more friendly to those voters that they must attract to stay viable. And instead, they are running headlong in the opposite direction, yet again.
Consider the current makeup of the GOP base. For the most part, it consists of older, lower middle and middle class southern white voters, scared shitless as they see the comfort zone of the country they grew up in shifting beneath their feet. And the rest of their base is far right Evangelical voters, who run around speaking in tongues, and looking for burning bushes.
When you look at the legislative agenda for GOP dominated states, you are slapped silly by the almost synchronized ballet of the intentions of their spring agenda. The GOP is monolithically going after three specific criteria. Voting rights, abortion rights, and LGBTQ-Trans rights. Notice any particular pattern there?
First out of the gate is voting rights. While the GOP may be dirt stupid, if you hit them over the head with the same 2×4 often enough, they get the memo. Not only did the Democrats rebuild their rust belt blue wall, but they flipped GOP strongholds of Arizona and Georgia. And they did so because too goddamned many brown people voted! And so, in every red state with a GOP majority, they’re scurrying around bad tempered imps, trying to correct the problem. And it has to be now, before they sink without a trace in 2022.
This is why it is so important for Majority Leader Schumer to fix the filibuster soonest, and get the We The People Act rammed through by a simple majority vote. Federal election laws override local state laws whenever it concerns national elections, which all US House and Senate elections are. Getting that passed will neuter the vast majority of local state laws as dark as suppressing either the vote, or early voting days as well as registration and mail in balloting.
Next out of the block is the restriction of, and hoped for banning of abortion rights. This is a classic example example of the GOP’s slavish devotion to a shrinking minority voting block. Evangelical membership continues to go down every time a poll is conducted, more and more people are becoming agnostic or unaffiliated. And abortion rights have only continued to become more popular every time that a poll is taken. And nothing is more likely to drive younger, more moderate, white suburban GOP women out to the polls than threatening their reproductive rights.
And batting cleanup is LGBTQ-Transgender rights. Again, the country is becoming younger, browner, more liberal, and more inclusive. And again, the most far right Evangelicals, those most likely to oppose LGBTQ-Transgender rights are disappearing like a Shrinky-Dink in the oven. And as with every other poll, LGBTQ-Transgender rights goes up every time a new poll comes out. In other words, it’s a loser.
Tonight on All In with Chris Hayes, he had a heart wrenching segment featuring a conservative state congressman whose daughter was a school aged trans. The congressman laid his soul bare in the hearing on a Trans restrictive bill in the legislature, saying how they had forced their daughter to dress as a boy, play boys sports, and go to school as a boy. The poor child was friendless, bullied, had zero self esteem, and did terribly at school. It was only when the parents had an epiphany, and let their daughter live as herself that her childhood turned around. The congressman literally begged the legislature to vote against the bill. I literally had tears in my eyes, and gave the congressman a standing ovation.
Again, this is a losing position for the GOP. The congressman I referenced demolished the hearing when he said, my God made my daughter a girl at conception, and the God I believe in doesn’t make mistakes. Once again, younger, more compassionate, moderate white women GOP voters will look at their own children, and think, There but for the grace of God, go I. And they will show up to the polls to help to ensure that other parents have every right to give their own children a free and happy childhood and life.
And there is going to be a wild card slithering through the 2022 midterms. El Pendejo Presidente is still stumbling around like a grizzly with a bad tooth. He has a long list of legislative traitors that he is going to oppose in the midterms, through the primary process. There are going to be a whole cadre of Trump acolytes running for House and Senate seats, and once again, there is nothing that is more likely to bring out moderate, white suburban GOP women than Donald Trump.
The path is wide open for the Democrats. Just Do. The. Job. Pass popular legislation that makes peoples lives better. Show people who were so turned off by politics as usual that they voted for Trump just to try to break the gridlock. Just stay the course, and show what a functioning government can do. Because, once again, the GOP is living in the past. And if things turn out like I think they will, then it will have been their last gasp.
Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35
They’re afraid of *trans women* – they don’t care about trans men.
The cruelty is the point.
If you read comments on stories about Elliot Page, they care. It’s just straight up bigotry and hate.
Well, when North Carolina was busy trying to police its public bathrooms, a lot of trans men were posting selfies of them (most with full beards and wearing men’s clothes) in women’s bathrooms asking if they were threats to the women whose bathrooms the bill would require them to use (unless, of course, someone objected to their bearded, men’s-clothes-wearing selves entering the ladies’ room).
Curiously, they never seemed to get any response or reaction from the male politicians pushing the bill who were more concerned about “men in dresses” using the ladies’ rooms in order to sexually harass (and possibly rape) all the “good” women and girls.
The GOP doesn’t reflect the sensibilities of most people I know, and I’m a geezer. Get out the vote, folks. Stay on top of this. Remind the public at every turn that they voted against pandemic aid, against a minimum wage, and all the other non-issues just cited. We are Americans and we are diverse. It’s late here, so goodnight, all.
I feel like we all lectured the GOP that if they let Trump turn them into a cult of personality, we’re a nation where leadership terms are finite, and if all the party stood for is Trump, when he shuffled off into the sunset they’d be left as a party with no platform that stood for nothing.
I mean…we all told them that, right? Welcome to the end of the concert. The band has gone home, we’re left to stack chairs and clean the suspiciously sticky floors, and some jerk has put Yanni at the Acropolis on the sound system.
A few more thoughts on the GOP non-agenda: voter suppression, people control, (especially of women), and economic dominance and protectionism (for them). They don’t want to engage in projects that actually help people, such as education, rebuilding infrastructure, and respecting individual rights, especially if one is non-anglo. I wish I were wrong, but that’s my impression of their lack of a real platform. Why is another question.
The story about the conservative with the trans daughter is an age-old story.
What do you bet that before she came out, he was a rabid anti-trans.
This is conservative 101. Against it until it affects them.
What is the GQP running on? Fumes, apparently. They got nothing, nothing that the majority of Americans want, which is why they can’t win elections unless they lie, cheat and steal. What sane person wants to vote for such a morally bankrupt, corrupted bunch of treasonous assholes? None, that’s why it’s the party of the looney tunes, half-wits, and gun nuts. The GQP needs to be fumigated.
SORRY MURPH .. what is this supposed to say.. ‘ Getting that passed will neuter the vast majority of local state laws as dark as suppressing either the vote, or early voting days as well as registration and mail in balloting.’
You know some of this vote suppression may come back to bite them in the ass. My dad had a stroke a few months back and now his signature is a mess, he doesn’t have a photo id and he lives in an assisted living facility. Getting his ballot is going to be a huge effort for me, because no one else is going to do the work to do this. He is an old white guy like me but votes liberal, how many older conservatives in similar situations are losing their votes because of the new laws? Younger people will be able to figure out the new laws and adapt to that. Any changes to seniors voting is going to lose their votes.