The Witness Chronicles, April 27, 2024

The end of the Republican Party?

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The Methodical Destruction of the Republican Party

Even the most progressive progressive should have a problem with this

Don’t get me wrong- I don’t have much love for the Republican Party, but I firmly believe they need to exist for our democracy to work. One of the genius aspects of the US Constitution is its set of checks and balances designed to keep that democracy from turning into an autocracy, a dictatorship.

The two party system is one of those checks and balances and Donald Trump is methodically dismantling the Party he purports to lead. It is perhaps the strangest political development of this very strange Presidential election year. And it should alarm all of us; left, right, and center.

As with most things Trump this year, it all cycles back to his election denial of 2020, denial which has become the litmus test for loyalty among the MAGA crowd. Any Republican who does not buy into the Trump election mythology is out in his book, effectively tearing the Party into two.

To follow this, it helps to understand that Trump is laying the groundwork for another election denial this year by taking all the Party resources and diverting them entirely to his campaign and his legal bills. Every dollar and every Party member must be devoted to Trump and Trump only.

The legal bills must be paid so he can fend off upcoming trials through his strategy of delay. If he does not pay those bills it will become impossible for him to hire competent attorneys, something he already struggles with. Without dangling those millions out there, no lawyer would touch this stuff.

Well, except the loons like Jenna Ellis and John Eastman, who now face disbarment and multiple felony indictments federally and in several states. Now that Trump is facing very real criminal prosecutions he cannot afford to hire that level of ‘talent’ again. He needs the real pit bulls.

So, the Republican National Committee (RNC), the victim of an efficient coup by the MAGA cult and now run by a prominent member of that cult and Lara Trump, DJT’s daughter-in-law, is diverting every dime raised exclusively to Trump. No campaign offices, no funds for other Republican candidates anywhere in the country, and a huge portion devoted to his legal war chest.

It is an action unprecedented in American politics, where the ground game is widely credited with the success or failure of any campaign. No volunteers, no get out the vote initiatives, no local advertising, no help whatsoever for any other politician at any level.

We are already seeing the results in a burgeoning revolt within the Party in Congress and beyond. Senators and House members’ once unquestioning loyalty to Trump is appearing shaky as even a staunch supporter like Speaker Mike Johnson sided with Democrats to pass aid bills that Trump opposed.

They’re worried, really worried. And they should be.

Most voters on both sides know how monstrous Trump’s egotism is but I think we have all underestimated it. The man simply cannot stomach the thought of anyone else getting any of the limelight and the culmination of that was the denial of the clear results in the last election, which he clearly lost.

And they are laying the groundwork for a much more sophisticated denial strategy this time around. They’ve built a team devoted to creating and claiming election fraud, though they would never admit it on those terms. That’s alarming enough, but it goes far deeper than that.

We know that because the man has clearly told us, repeatedly, what he intends to do with the government, essentially turning it into all Trump all the time. 

We have seen this in history over and over again, most recently in Germany's Adolf Hitler who literally declared himself the Father (Fuhrer) of his people and Cambodia’s Pol Pot in the seventies who murdered millions of his own people for perceived disloyalty.

We can take some comfort in knowing both didn’t last out the length of their lives but the costs in the meantime for that kind of obsession are horrifying. And today we see it in Putin’s Russia and even the leadership of Israel’s Netanyahu, both of whom Donald Trump openly admires.

That kind of ‘leadership’ is based on a total lack of compassion and a willingness to sacrifice thousands of lives to retain power. We can’t underestimate its chances of happening here.

The net result of what I think we are seeing is the methodical destruction of a great political party, by its own leader, because that Party does not exclusively represent Donald Trump. He simply cannot stand the idea that ‘his party’ would represent any opposing view on anything.

Given this doom and gloom scenario, there are big cracks appearing in this strategy, and the Democrats are quietly exploiting them. First is Trump himself, appearing increasingly desperate as he sits in a courtroom and listens to witnesses telling the world what a despicable human he is.

Those witnesses are all former allies.

It is visibly aging him and his incessant lying is out of control, with paranoid middle of the night rants appearing every night on his social media channel Truth Social, which is itself failing financially. Its recently listed stock is plummeting as even loyalist investors realize it has no business model and loses money at crazy rates.

That stock value was one of Trump’s financial lifelines and he has to watch it disappear while he is trapped in a courtroom. He has repeatedly begged his followers to create chaos outside that court but few have paid any attention.

This is where the monstrous ego and narcissism can be his downfall. He and his diehard inner circle appear to have embraced a myth of their own making, the myth that DJT will prevail and they will be rewarded for that failure with unfettered power.

They are blinded by that myth while outside, here in reality, it is falling to pieces. The Democrats under Biden know what he is up to with his planned coup and they are preparing to fight it by showing American voters a future rather than a past that never existed, a past where the world was wonderful under President Donald Trump.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is a fight for the future of the American Democratic experiment that says all citizens are equal under law and no man is above it. We can only hope that respectable members of the Republican Party see this and understand the end result would be the destruction of their Party forever.

~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen. 

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