Why Republicans like Kasich. Corker, and hell even McCain and Shelby, matter
It's not because they don't have blood on their hands for allowing the Right Wing Hate Machine to grow and metastasize unopposed for the last ten years or more. It's not became they can ever be counted on to back an agenda for America that benefits the mast majority of Americans. It's not because they are doing all that they can to counter the toxic lack of human decency and authoritarian cravings of the current occupant of the Oval Office. And it's not because they won't betray us all at the drop of a hat, regardless of the words they use from time to time critical of the Trumps and Moores in their party.
It's because they are a flickering part of a very thin red line that stands between preserving our nation's democratic heritage and the complete normalization of having a want to be crypto fascist dictator as America's leader and Commander in Chief. Those men, and a few more elected Republicans like them, are among a tiny handful of elected members of the governing party of America who on rare occasions find it in themselves to mouth words to the effect that "this is going too far", "this is not what America is about".
Whether or not they have the guts or moral clarity to do more than murmur some disapproving words on rare occasions, isn't the point. For now it is clear that they don't. But even those hollow words have meaning now, because the criticism of all that men like Trump and Moore represent can not emanate exclusively from Democrats. There must be at least a thin veneer of bipartisan alarm, muted as those rare elected Republican voices may be, when Trump and men like Moore advocate and/or take steps that are a danger to our democracy. Without that what Trump is doing to America, and the organic opposition that rises against it, will be passed off as the modern version of mere partisan politics. And it isn't.
Our last President earned himself the label "no drama Obama" while in office. Now he is warning us all, in public, about the need to resist the rise of fascism in America. Resisting fascism was never a partisan issue for Americans - it was part of our national calling. We can not allow what is happening in America now to be reduced to a seeming debate over the Republican vs Democratic agendas. As deadly as the differences in those agendas in fact actually are to many millions of American, what is happening now goes deeper than that. Whatever our individual ages may be, we all were handed an at least minimally functioning democracy by the generations that preceded us, and that legacy - forging a more perfect Union, stretches back to the Revolutionary War.
We can not allow that dream to die on our watch. And it will take all of us, even the meekest of Republican opponents to Trump's vision of America, to speak up; even when actions that make up real resistance remain sorely lacking. The silence must be shattered. This is not just partisan politics.This is about keeping America great, or at least preserving the vision of a better society that generations of Americans have sacrificed their lives defending.
That is why I refrain from sarcastic comments when someone like Shelby admits that he can not bring himself to vote for someone like Moore. It needed to be said, even if I can not find a single other thing that Shelby says or does that I can agree with.
= new reply since forum marked as read
