by Brian T. Lynch, MSW
The Party of Lincoln is gone. Forever gone. All that remains of it are a nostalgic band of loyal followers around the country who can’t see, or accept that it’s gone.
Systematically over time, and with stealth, the Republican Party officeholders have been replaced by politicians who are hostile to a pluralistic, democratic Republic in which they must share power with others who don’t look, think, or worship like them. The goal of these democracy-thieves is to take down our Republic and replace it with a Neo-Republican authoritarian state. We have seen how this works in states today that already have all Republican control. An authoritarian, single-party federal government is the only way they can impose the “superior” will on the majority of Americans. Their long-range plans for the takeover of our Republic can be seen most clearly in the broad outlines of their attacks on the government.
When these Neo-Republicans recently controlled the Congress and the Democrats controlled the Executive Branch, they grossly abused their Congressional oversite authority to disrupt the regular order of government. They blocked or attempted to block all legislative initiatives, even ones they had proposed themselves. They blocked all judicial nominations, especially, and most dramatically, to the Supreme Court. In the state governments controlled by them, they suppressed the vote and drew up unconstitutional Congressional districts to hold on to power. They passed unconstitutional anti-abortion laws. In Washington, they shut down the federal the government on several occasions to alienate the affection of the people towards our Republic. They harassed the popularly elected President, Barak Obama, with endless investigations and obstreperous oversite. We thought this was because Obama self-identified as an African-American. This was partly true, but it was only just the surface of what they were really up to, as it turns out.
After the Executive Branch flipped to Trump, with an assist from Russia, the Neo-Republicans ended all over-site while President Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to our Republic and democratic institutions we so admired. He began installing himself as the first Supreme Executive while breaking every norm of the high Office he holds.
Now with Democrats in control of the House of Representatives, regular oversite is being restored. But Donald Trump, backed up by Congressional Neo-Republicans, is resisting any oversite activity whatsoever. He is challenging the House’s authority to hold him accountable in any way. When you step back to look at the big picture it becomes clear that we are experiencing a slow-motion coup d’état.
Consider how the Republicans have been blocking all Democratic Party candidates for federal judgeships while packing the Judiciary with their ideological judges when Republicans are in control. Consider how brazenly Mitch McConnell stonewalled President Obama’s pick to replace Justice Scalia for over a year in order to fill the vacancy with a Republican ideologue.
We have three separate co-equal branches of government. To take control you must control all three branches. At this moment in history, only the House of Representatives is beyond their control.
But there is also the question of the fourth estate, the news media. You can’t get away with taking over control of a government without also taking control of the messaging and public perceptions. Here is where the Republican coup actually got started, after Nixon’s impeachment. For a whole generation now, the Neo-Republicans have been building a massive network of alt-right media with a high online presence and lots of toxic, anti-government content.
This alt-right network, the Republican “echo chamber” as Hillary Clinton first perceived it, is now working in parallel with Russian cyber-disinformation activities to continually misinform and arouse the alt-right political base that Neo-Republicans have been carefully cultivated over the years.
So, put it all together and what immerges is a new Republican Party grasping to control all of the levers of power in order to have their way. This new governing party doesn’t want majority rule when that includes the votes and opinion of people they don’t like; People who don’t share their distorted Christian values. Our most trusted democratic institutions, such as the FBI, NSA, the Justice Department, are under siege. They are beginning to crack. The status of the Judicial branch, and especially the Supreme Court to save our democracy is about to be severely tested, and the prospects of salvation from the Court seems murky at best.
Here is how the revolution stands. We have embattled civil servants trying courageously and disparately to hold on to our great democratic institutions and the rule of law. We have one-half of the legislative branch clinging on to our democracy. They are just beginning to understand the fight they are in. They are trying to right the ship of state without the support they were expecting from the Neo-Republicans in Congress. We have the fourth-estate locked in a massive counter-informational battle with alt-right media and foreign powers.
And so we must now pin our hopes on a deeply divided judicial system and Supreme Court, hoping that just one conservative Justice will rise above politics to save our Republic.
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