“If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon follow.” Arab proverb
How did America get from Barack Obama to Donald Trump? How was that even possible? It’s a long journey from “Yes, we can” to “Kiss my ass”.
We clutch our collective pearls at the moral hypocrisy of the Republican Party – from their Elmer Gantry style legislators, many of whom cut their teeth as proud southern racists – to Roy Moore, an accused Bible-thumping pedophile. From their newly appointed Supreme Court justice, who appears to have acquired both his worldview and his judicial temperament from habitually binging on beer and broads as a frat-boy – to their standard bearer, their President of the United States, who as Richard Cohen said, “fell to earth from inside a 30-year-old Playboy magazine”.
In this brave new world of sulfurous Republican politics, words bear witness to nothing. Vows like: “I will protect your healthcare and guarantee coverage of your pre-existing conditions” are unambiguous lies promulgated by this current batch of GOP politicians hoping to be elected on November 6, 2018. So one might ask: What is the Republican Party’s record on speaking the truth, on governing honestly with the integrity one expects from the party of Lincoln?
Here are the facts about the Republican Party. Here are the actions that should speak louder than their words:
From 1970, Democratic presidencies have resulted in exactly 1 criminal conviction from investigations into their administrations. During that same period, Republican presidencies have had a total of 91.
Number of Criminal Convictions by Political Party Since 1970
6 Republican presidencies = 91 convictions
3 Democratic presidencies = 1 conviction
91 Republican convictions to 1 Democratic conviction
If you look at criminal indictments, not just convictions, it’s equally shocking: GOP Presidencies had 124 criminal indictments. Democrats had 3. How about prison sentences? GOP = 14 for GOP Presidencies, DNC = 1 for Democratic ones. So far, Democrats have fewer total indictments since 1970 than Donald Trump does since he took office in 2017. If that doesn’t shock you, then the GOP has a big, beautiful Bridge to Nowhere that they want you to buy next Tuesday.
To Democratic voters, the Republican Party is no longer a legitimate political party in America. It is led by a murder of crows – scavengers who don’t necessarily kill their prey, but survive splendidly on their carcasses. To Democrats, the means justify the ends; to Republicans, the ends justify the means.
But to Republican voters, each ethical assault on our nation is symptomatic of nothing. The nation, defined by their own party’s founder as “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”, refers only to them and to their own narrow personal interests. To them, each blow to our environment; each brutalization of innocent children imprisoned in internment camps; each violation of treaties intended to maintain global stability and economic order is merely a temporary deviation from the well-trod path of our American democracy.
So, how did the Republicans evolve from the party of Lincoln to its outlaw culture of today? To its swaggering, gun-toting ‘Merica and its sneering alt-right thugs? We arrived at this moment because we have tolerated their incremental deviations from a path of democratic governance for almost five decades. We have permitted ourselves to view the criminality of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra scheme as aberrations. We failed to fight the politically motivated impeachment of Bill Clinton, and we stood silent as it became clear that the Iraq War had been justified with a series of lies spoken by their Republican president, George W. Bush. Their trickle-down tax policies have brought America nothing but successive recessions and now unheard-of budget deficits.
The Republican Party has been running roughshod over democratic norms for half a century, but Democrats have continued to cling to their utopian fantasies and to their habit of turning the other cheek.
And now the Republican Party appears to be too big to fail. Now, three quarters of the camel is already in the tent. If Democrats and Independents don’t vote this party out of power on Tuesday, it will be too late, and we’ll all have to grab what we can and join the caravan.
Cartoon by Robert Ariail, The State (SC)
Deborah Long is a Principal at Development Management Group, Inc. and founder of several non-profit charitable organizations. If you find her perspectives interesting, controversial, or provocative, follow her at: https://www.facebook.com/debby.long.98499?ref=br_rs
Deborah Long is a Principal at Development Management Group, Inc. and founder of several non-profit, charitable organizations. If you find her perspectives interesting, controversial, or provocative, you can follow her at: https://www.facebook.com/debby.long.98499?ref=br_rs