Here’s a warning up front: this post is political.
The Republican vote to remove Representative Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the party is the final nail in the coffin for me. In reality though, that nail had already been beaten down to within a blow of going in completely. I long ago established that I won’t vote for either of the two main parties for president, but I’ve always leaned Republican on down- and mid-term ballots.
That’s over now. I’m done with the whole lot of them (and I don’t think I have enough life left in me for them to make me think otherwise in the future). Liz Cheney may not be the poster child for uprightness and virtue (I couldn’t tell you one way or the other) – and I can assure you that the left will turn on her at the drop of a hat (as some already have on some points) – but she did tell the truth about this one thing. She did sound the alarm over the true threat to our nation and its system of democracy that is the former president. And I’m not being hyperbolic here. To have an unstable narcissist insist that the system is so corrupted that the sum of its corruption swayed an election so dramatically that he lost by more than 7 million votes (that’s a lot of fraud to go without evidence) – and to have 70% of a political party’s adherents actually believe that – is a clear sign that the party as a serious political entity is gone. It’s gone because it’s filled with gullible people with such a shallow view of how our democracy works that they honestly shouldn’t be trusted with a ballot. Ironically though, their right to vote – as manipulated and uninformed as it may be – is protected by the same democracy that they are now working so ignorantly to destroy.
So this farcical excuse of a political party has done the math. They believe so much in the power of the 70% who have bought into the man’s unfounded claims that they’re willing to dump the 30% who have to be thinking right now, “Am I going to throw my vote to a party that’s unwilling to do something as simple as telling the truth in the face of obvious evidence?” I see the action of even entertaining that calculation as a sign of utter cowardice and disrespect, and it has disgusted me right out of any notion that I could ever vote for a Republican again. And there have to be plenty among the 30% who feel the same.
I sincerely hope that the likes of Cheney, Romney, Sasse, and others who have had the courage not to kneel at the altar of power over truth will break away and form a party that comes back to what the Republicans used to claim (but sadly haven’t done in quite some time). The country needs men and women of character who put the interests of the American people first. We are at a crucial moment in our nation’s history, and the Republicans are choosing that moment not to step up, but rather to bow down to a liar whose number one priority is quite obviously himself.
I’ve never been one to paint with a broad brush in condemnation of any group. But the broad brush analogy only applies when you’re condemning the many for the actions of a few. This just isn’t the case. This is the many painting themselves in one way: as the party that believes an “acceptable” number of the American people are too stupid to recognize the lies they’re being told. And so they’ve decided it’s better to throw their lot in with the liar than to have the courage to go with the truth. And it showed nowhere more clearly than when they decided that telling the truth actually disqualifies anyone from being a leader among them. I think you can hardly send a stronger message than that.
I guess I can be thankful for one thing though – they’ve made the decision so obvious that I didn’t have to agonize over it for one second. At least they got one thing right.
