The death of the Republican Party has been anticipated for a long time. What wasn't anticipated was that in their death throes they would try to dismantle, muck-up, and freeze the American federal government to the point of creating a global panic.
Apparently we're a few days away from defaulting on our debts. The nation is at a historic crisis point. The causes of the impending catastrophe isn't due to war, lack of money, or civil insurrection. It is a pre-planned and initiated drama aimed at satisfying a small group of radicalized followers whose disdain for a sitting president and opposition party has blocked out any rational thought as to the greater good for their own country.
Throughout Obama's presidency, Republicans in the House of Representatives have threatened to shut off funding for the entire government because of disagreements on individual bills. Rather than going through the process of election and majority rules, the GOP has now pivoted to suicide bomber tactics. They intend to destroy themselves in the hopes of causing damage and pain to others. It's not clear if they have dreams of getting to a GOP heaven with 67 virgins who look like Ann Coulter, but they certain do love using their manufactured disaster to visit the Elysian fields of Conservatism: Fox News.
The Default Crisis has been great for TV news ratings and stirring outrage on both sides at the expense of crippling our ability to regulate, tax, pay debt, and function as a federalized government. What is sad is that we have been heading toward this point in our history for a while. For many decades a small group of radical Conservatives have associated America with their way of thinking exclusively. If there's dissension then it can't be American. Despite this unbending belief, the country has changed in the last 30 years. Their demographics are dwindling. The party for people who think like Old White Men is running out of members and they can't find a way to convert a significant portion of women and non-Whites over to a philosophy steeped in xenophobia, isolationism, misogyny, and bigotry. Despite all the flags and country music, a vast majority of the younger generation isn't buying into the idea that one party holds the exclusive rights to Patriotism and Americana. In response to this, the patriotic Republicans are going to burn down America. This act of willfulness they claim is out of love, in the same way that an abusive person beats, burns, and kills their battered partner and then says 'why did you make me do that? You know how much I love you, right?'
They've dug the hole and intend to get out of it by going deeper: now some members are threatening to impeach Obama for the default. The very destruction they've worked to bring about is -in their eyes- a sign of Obama's treason. He should have given into their demands. Even though he was twice elected by large margins, even though Dems maintain control of the Senate and many states in the union, it is Obama who must bend to the will of 30 House Republicans. And if he doesn't then the country will fail and, at that point, he will be responsible for the crisis they created. It's Mad Hatter logic.
The GOP claims it wants government out of our lives...except when it comes to a woman's vagina, or illegal immigrants, mandatory sentencing, Black teens being illegally stop n' frisked, or unarmed people of color being killed by law enforcement officers and vigilantes. They are fine with government taking a very violent and coercive role in the lives of Brown and Black people, invasive procedures against women to humiliate them away from having a right to choose abortion, denying basic civil rights of privacy to all, splitting up families through deportation so that children are abandoned, adding more rules to make it more difficult to vote for minorities. It makes sense when their ideal America looks like a 1950s TV sitcom.
But other than your body, health, and mental well-being, the GOP want government out of our lives so we can be free to...enjoy unregulated water supplies and breathe in toxic air, eat genetically modified food, work below the minimum wage, have employee benefits stripped away, and plunge 300 million citizens into the hellmouth of unregulated casino capitalism.
The Default crisis isn't an aberration. It's a long-term cancer that continues to pop up in manufactured disasters by a few people who are losing their way and losing the country. I just hope the majority of people don't let an angry few take everyone down with them.
The death of the Republican party has been diagnosed but it's not the shifting demographics. The cancer of hate in their body politics is too far gone to salvage its remaining virtues. Their perspective is too warped on memories to see the present reality. In short, the patient's condition is terminal and there's no need to linger. For the sake of our children and all future generations, the Republican party can commit itself to one last patriotic deed: to die.
