The GOP's apathy for governing is being exposed

[applegrove]

The GOP's apathy for governing is being exposed

Ryan Cooper at The Week

February 25, 2021

https://theweek.com/articles/968693/gops-apathy-governing-being-exposed

"SNIP......

Conservative politics in America has been consumed by media and propaganda. The concrete functions of political institutions — providing services, programs, and so on to constituents — have been ignored or forgotten by a growing number of Republican politicians, like Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who tried to flee to Mexico while his state was being crushed by a winter storm and massive power outages.

This absence may be the least-noticed political vulnerability of the Republican Party. Propaganda is indeed very powerful, but material action also pays political benefits, particularly when times are tough. Democrats should do big, popular things, and attack Republicans for failing to support them.

Democrats, for all their faults, still at least try to take constituent services seriously, and some of them are quite good at it. For instance, while Cruz scarpered to Mexico, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a second-term member of Congress from Queens, let me emphasize — raised some $5 million in aid and traveled to Houston to help disburse it. Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke behaved similarly, and may have revived his career in Texas politics in the process.

Cruz is also not even close to the most apathetic Republican in Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) shrugged at being voted off all committees in the House (in punishment for supporting the Jan. 6 putsch and spreading a variety of lunatic conspiracy theories). "Going forward, I've been freed," she said, arguing those pesky governing responsibilities were just getting in the way of campaigning. Her fellow freshman Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) runs his office like a public relations firm: "I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation," he wrote to other Republicans in an email obtained by Time.

.......SNIP"

[Skittles]

1. they say gov't is the problem, then prove it by being shitty at it

people need to STOP VOTING FOR THEM

[Hermit-The-Prog]

2. Republicans destroy. Democrats build.

The primary function of any government is to protect the governed.

The primary goal of the Republican party is to destroy government while handing its functions over to private owners who then pay Republicans.

The Democratic party seeks to use the power of government to build protections for those among the governed who are unprotected or under-protected from various threats to their well-being.

[Hortensis]

3. What was once the GOP has been taken over. It's no longer a

governing party, but a very far-right revolutionary movement. With strong cult-leader, religious-based, white nationalist, even neonazi, fervor.

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[Hortensis]

4. The GOP's establishment leadership is now suddenly a small faction

scrabbling for survival. God knows these corrupt, soulless operatives brought this on by betraying virtually all conservative ideals and goals, but the Trumpzis who've taken over their swamp are forcing them to scramble for slightly higher ground.

Bill Kristol is calling this remnant "the Republican wing of the Biden coalition." Because there's some real truth in that.

They can't win by appearing to ally with Democrats, but they'll fail and fall without allying against an evil that makes their corruption look merely like the self serving betrayal of all principles and duties that it is.