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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Fri Jul 28, 2017, 04:00 PM Jul 2017

This is what you get when you elect Republicans

By Paul Waldman July 28 at 1:30 PM

This has been quite a week in Washington, a week full of terror, intrigue, suspense, backstabbing and outright chaos. While we might not have been able to predict the particular contours of the catastrophe that complete GOP rule has been, we should have known it would turn out something like this.

Guess what, America: This is what you get when you elect Republicans.

It goes much further than their repugnant and disastrous effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but all the contemporary GOP’s pathologies could be seen there: their outright malice toward ordinary people, their indifference to the suffering of their fellow citizens, their blazing incompetence, their contempt for democratic norms, their shameless hypocrisy, their gleeful ignorance about policy, their utter dishonesty and bad faith, their pure cynicism, and their complete inability to perform anything that resembles governing. It was the perfect Republican spectacle.

It’s remarkable to consider that there was a time not too long ago when the Grand Old Party was known for being serious, sober, a little boring, but above all, responsible. They were conservative in the traditional sense: wanting to conserve what they thought was good and fearful of rapid change. You might not have agreed with them, but there were limits to the damage they could do. The devolution from that Republican Party to the one we see today took a couple of decades and had many sources, but its fullest expression was reached with the lifting up of Donald J. Trump to the presidency, this contemptible buffoon who may have been literally the single worst prominent American they could have chosen to be their standard-bearer. I mean that seriously. Can you think of a single person who might have run for president who is more ignorant, more impulsive, more vindictive and more generally dangerous than Donald Trump? And yet they rallied around him with near-unanimity, a worried shake of the head to his endless stream of atrocious statements and actions the strongest dissent most of them could muster.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/07/28/this-is-what-you-get-when-you-elect-republicans/?utm_term=.3e899cbce9d1&wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1

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This is what you get when you elect Republicans (Original Post) DonViejo Jul 2017 OP
K&R for visibility. nt tblue37 Jul 2017 #1
K & R dhill926 Jul 2017 #2
what I want to know is Skittles Jul 2017 #3
K&R, a sentence from the end of the column PJMcK Jul 2017 #4
the kind of thing we've been saying about the GOP all along RussBLib Jul 2017 #5

Skittles

(153,150 posts)
3. what I want to know is
Fri Jul 28, 2017, 05:11 PM
Jul 2017

WHEN ARE PEOPLE GOING TO GET THAT REPUBLICANS DO NOT CARE ABOUT THEM

*WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE???*

PJMcK

(22,031 posts)
4. K&R, a sentence from the end of the column
Sat Jul 29, 2017, 08:11 AM
Jul 2017

"Trump is the essence of the GOP, distilled down to its depraved and odious core."

Very good read. Thanks, DonViejo.

RussBLib

(9,006 posts)
5. the kind of thing we've been saying about the GOP all along
Sat Jul 29, 2017, 04:50 PM
Jul 2017

It's a pleasure (a perverse pleasure, I guess) when you can find someone to put it so succinctly.

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