The Dark Heart of the Republican Party

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/11/the-dark-heart-of-the-gop/671965/


No paywall
https://archive.ph/dE7bd

A Spreading Cancer

It might seem late in the game to point to any one event as a final or conclusive moment in the decline of the Republican Party. And I have no doubt that if the GOP returns to power this winter, its worst members will find new ways to appall decent people while gamboling about in jester’s bells for its base. (As my Atlantic colleague Adam Serwer has put it so well, “The cruelty is the point.”) But the reaction among Republican elected officials and their conservative-media life-support system to the beating of Paul Pelosi—by a man named David DePape, who was charged with attempting to kidnap Speaker Nancy Pelosi and admitted to planning to torture her—feels different.

I am not alone; my friend Mona Charen, among others, also senses that this event marks a new level of depravity in the GOP. I have struggled for a few days to decide why, exactly, this moment seems like an inflection point. In terms of actual damage, January 6 was far worse than one violent crime in San Francisco. Republican leaders—and here I will leave aside Donald Trump, who is in a class of hideousness all by himself—have said far worse things over the past five years. But a parade of Republicans somehow think that an unhinged, hammer-wielding intruder putting an old man in the ICU is funny.

We might expect such inanity from pathetic attention hounds such as Donald Trump Jr. and the usual conservative troll-pundits. Some of them tried to get a rumor about Paul Pelosi trending and briefly succeeded, especially when Twitter’s new boss, Elon Musk, characteristically decided that he just had to get involved in something he knows nothing about and amplified a dodgy story about it on Twitter. (He later deleted the tweet.) GOP leaders, however, stayed silent.

But that didn’t stop people in both right-wing politics and media from laughing it up over the Pelosi attack, including the Arizona gubernatorial contender Kari Lake, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, and sitting Representative Clay Higgins. Others have joined in trying to obfuscate or deflect attention from the intent of the attack; Senator John Cornyn of Texas even lamely tried to raise immigration as an issue. (DePape is here on a long-expired visa from Canada.)

*snip*

[calimary]

1. Thanks for this.

Cancer eventually kills. That’s my fear. I’ve had friends who went into remission and that was a good thing. But only temporarily. Cancer eventually came back and wouldn’t stop til it finally won and the patient lost.

I don’t know what’s ahead, but I feel like I want to sleep through next week.

[Jerry2144]

2. Prove they have a heart

I don’t think they do.

Instead, I think they have a misplaced gall bladder that’s trying to serve as a heart. It explains all the bile, vitriol, and unmitigated gall of those less than nice people

[tanyev]

3. The horror! The horror!

[Heather MC]

4. Psst... The CONFEDERATE wing of the Republican Party has taken full control of the party

It's time we stopped calling them republicans and started calling them who they really are
The Confederate party.

Remember the Confederacy never died they have been they abandoned the Democratic Party when democrats gave black women the right to vote. And they infected the Republican party with their hate and their racism in their desire for slavery.

And they have bided their time because they're extremely patient which makes them the most dangerous of all.

And they slowly overtook the Republican party. And now all this left is the Confederacy again

Think about it they keep telling us that we are Republic. Will they believe that the Republic means the minority rules the majority

THAT IS SLAVERY🤷🏾?♀️
Let freedom ring!

[Nevilledog]

5. I just call them fascists or Christofascists.

They're not a legitimate political party anymore.

[Heather MC]

6. I think all those names are cute but don't really get to the heart of who and what they are

This is the Confederate party reborn.

That's all they ever were, and that's all they ever will be.

The Republican party is the pro slavery party.

And they have been ever since 1964 when black women got the right To vote. And all the WhiteRacist Dixiecrats ran to the Republican party.

That is why to this day, their support is predominantly white people. And what they fear the most is white people becoming the minority. Because then who would vote for them?

That is why they are panicking and trying to force white women to have more babies by any means necessary