RIP GOP: If the House selects Jim Jordan as Speaker, everyone will know the Republican party is dead.
The MAGA party, with Jim Jordan in the House and Donald Trump as their standard bearer, most resembles the Chinese Communist Party. Part cult of personality, part coercive force.
It now seems likely that America’s conservative party will disappear in a few hours, fully to be replaced by the MAGA revolutionary party. Conservatives who fought to keep their party and their movement alive, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and others have been expelled from this new party. What’s left is a dangerous personality cult aimed at using the powers they have to gain and hold yet more power.
MAGA vacated the office of the Speaker for the first time in history because they thought the GOP Speaker, Kevin McCarthy failed to put the new party’s interests ahead of everything else, including the national interest. Though the legislative coup that ousted McCarthy was unprecedented, the MAGA sacking of a GOP House Speaker is not. Ask John Boehner and Paul Ryan.
The holdouts, those few Republican conservatives left in the House, face unprecedented pressure to walk away from their values, their commitments, and their service to the American people. Mr. Trump’s advisor, the powerful right wing talk show host Sean Hannity, is using his considerable megaphone to destroy the careers of any who dare stand up to rising of Jim Jordan and the MAGA movement. True, it would only take a few of them to accept the Democrat’s offer to work together from the middle. But it is a fool’s bet to count on courage from any of them.
Creator: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN | Credit: REUTERS
If the House selects Jim Jordan as Speaker, the GOP will officially be dead. In its place, controlling the US House will be a party dedicated only to itself. The MAGA agenda is not about policy, and it is certainly not conservative. It will make policy choices based only on whether those choices strengthen its control.
America has never had a political party quite like this, other countries have. The MAGA party, with Jim Jordan in the House and Donald Trump as their standard bearer, most resembles the Chinese Communist Party. Part cult of personality, part coercive force.
We would not be in this dangerous moment had the last election cycle been conducted using constitutional maps. Ohio’s delegation, which includes Mr. Jordan, ran on maps the state’s supreme court had ruled were unconstitutional. The MAGA controlled legislature simply ran out the clock and forced citizens into these districts despite the ruling. Similarly in states across the south, MAGA candidates became MAGA congressmen in districts the Supreme Court refused to call illegal until after the election.
The monster inhabiting the body of the now dead GOP has no place in American politics. Conservatives and progressives have common ground in their love for our democracy. I expect us to unite to save the country we love while we still can.