Whenever the GOP gets power, they abuse it. That should be a key election issue this year.
Millions of us have no patience for would-be strongmen who will tell us what to do and use the force of government to go after those who challenge them.
There is room in our democracy for conservatives and progressives and much more. But there is no room for anyone if the game is rigged and basic fairness is ground under the heavy foot of power. This, more than anything else, is why MAGA must be defeated, and why it will be defeated.
That MAGA is a cult of power must no longer be questioned. They prove it at every opportunity. For example, just last week, they decided that the border was not a big problem after all and tanked the legislation their own team negotiated, legislation they called the toughest border measure ever. Far more important than the border was the cult, and Mr. Trump calculated that fixing the border might strengthen the United States, but it would not strengthen the cult. They proved it again this week when they impeached the Secretary of Homeland Security in order to blame him for problems on the border that they don’t want to fix. They impeached him despite lacking any evidence of wrongdoing. Power cults don’t bother with things like evidence.
The cult leader is, of course, Donald Trump, whose abuses of power are well known. He was impeached the first time for abusing his power to schedule the delivery of military aide to shake down Ukraine’s President Zelensky for political favors. More recently, his response to being found liable for sexual assault, defamation, business fraud, and being indicted for racketeering and insurrection, is to say that if he takes power he will go after those who tried to hold him to account. Power is the only evidence that matters. We have all seen Mr. Trump use his power to mock, belittle, and betray. We have seen him use it to wheedle contributions to his criminal defense fund from Americans he has duped into thinking they are somehow paying to protect our democracy. And, of course, for MAGA, the cause of power justified Trump’ abuses when he did all he could to overturn his epic loss to Joe Biden.
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In the Senate, Republicans worshiped power over all else when they refused to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee and again when they rushed the confirmation of a Trump appointee while votes were being cast in the election that would then oust Trump.
What did the Court do almost as soon as possible after the GOP gained firm control? They threw out precedent and our unbroken tradition of expanding rights by making abortion illegal. Never mind that most Americans find that decision appalling. Power cults reward their supporters and punish the rest of us.
On issues big and small, Republican Senators who once stood firmly for a proposition now stand against the same proposition just because Mr. Trump told them to. If you doubt that, see Lindsay Graham on aid to Ukraine. That’s what a power cult does.
In Texas, Governor Abbot interposed his National Guard between the US Department of Homeland Security and the border. Texas then asked for and received the support of dozens of Republican Governors to argue that states should be allowed to set their own foreign policy. These states now say they will refuse to accept the rule of law and will instead provoke a winner-take-all crisis.
That’s what the MAGA legislatures did in Wisconsin and Ohio. The radical gerrymandering in those states means that Republicans retain super majorities even when Democrats win most of the votes in state legislative races. And what does the GOP do with that ill-gotten power? They use it to sell public services to contributors. The scandals in Ohio make my historically corrupt State of Illinois look pollyannaish.
Unless it is theirs to control, the MAGA crowd say power is illegitimate; when it’s theirs, they use it to give tax breaks to their corporate donors, protect polluters, gut child labor laws, privatize public education, and to take away rights: voting rights, abortion rights, civil rights, the right to read whatever book you choose. They use it to further entrench themselves by limiting the ways people can vote. They use it to reward their supporters in the gun and oil lobbies. Across the country, MAGA controlled governments hide their crimes by enacting limits on the press and the public’s right to information about government spending.
When one side must win everything or else, or else is the only option. This is why they must be defeated.
It is also why they will be defeated.
There is a common thread in the victories Democrats keep racking up, from ousting Trump in 2020, to the midterms, to the off-year and special elections. Americans sense that the GOP has abandoned even the most basic rules, acted in bad faith, and turned their back on fair play.
We are not Russia, despite the clear desire of MAGA leadership to turn us into that kind of autocratic kleptocracy. Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader Putin tortured, and this week killed in prison, is a hero in part because he stood alone against Putin’s tyranny. Here in America, we have a different relationship with tyrants and with our government. Millions of us, ordinary citizens that we are, have no patience for would-be strongmen who will tell us what to do and use the force of government to go after those who challenge them. It is precisely because they are a power cult that MAGA cannot tell the difference between legitimate prosecution of their own law breakers and illegitimate persecution of the rest of us.
There’s an old saying in politics, pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered. Across America people are waking up to the oinks and grunts of MAGA hogs trying to take everything. Americans see that whenever the GOP gets power, they abuse it. Democrats don’t keep winning because we have better candidates, though we do. We don’t win because voters agree with us on questions of policy. They don’t. Heck, we don’t even agree amongst ourselves. We win because people have a sense of fair play, and Americans can tell that the MAGA crowd has gone too far.