The hollow men
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
By tomorrow, the hollow men and women of the Republican Party will have ousted Liz Cheney from her leadership post. Ms. Cheney has been vocal in her fight against the Trumpian Big Lie, that the election was stolen from the former guy. In any other regard, she is a virulent conservative, against anything proposed by the Biden Administration. But because she won't fall in with the Stalinist personality cult which currently is the GOP's only reason for existence, she will be expelled and expunged, her memory damned.
I'm not carrying water for Ms. Cheney. In every other sense she is anathema to my politics. Just look at her congressional website. But we share one thing in common: a dedication to democracy, however the chips may fall.
One would think that the scion of Dick Cheney would be all in on the authoritarian project. It beggars belief that she's not. But it was she who was the motive force behind getting her father and other former secretaries of defense to write the open letter to the Pentagon last year, reminding it to not fall in line with Trump and overturn the November election. We can argue and fight with conservatives; but a true conservative is one who, in the end, believes in this democratic experiment. Ms. Cheney knows that revolutions almost always eat their own.
Her putative leader, California congressman Kevin McCarthy, is a portrait in abject servility. For a few days he spoke brave words castigating the former man. Then he was summoned to the court-in-exile, and all was forgiven on his part, regardless of how close he came to death at the hands of Trump's thugs. He immediately went all in on the Republican effort to push the January 6th Insurrection down the memory hole as an inconvenient fact.
It's facile to say that the Republicans now chanting Trump's name are frightened of him and his goons. It's equally facile to say that Trump has something on them. That removes agency and responsibility from them. They may not all be avowed fascists, like Louie Gohmert and Jim Jordan. But they are all after the main chance, and see fealty to Trump as the only way to keep their jobs and line their pockets. The GOP has no ideology save power. They're not afraid of Trump; they're afraid of no longer having their sinecures. The person set to replace Ms. Cheney, Elise Stefanik, is a "moderate" by comparison to her caucus. She was even considered by many in the media to be a new kind of Republican, one who could lead the party to a post-Trump future. Instead, she took the easy road, and paid obeisance to the Generalissimo. The vast majority of her party has no honor, and no principles save securing the next electoral victory.
Compare the GOP to its counterpart across the Pond. The Conservative Party has almost destroyed the Labour Party in its working-class heartland by speaking in the language of its one-time voters, promising jobs, a "leveling up" so that Hartlepool has as much chance to succeed as London. It's combined this with an appeal to patriotism. Whether the Tories will follow through on their promises is an entire other matter. But they're offering something besides culture wars. All that the GOP has left to offer its voters is resentment and animus. It doesn't actually offer anything which will make their lives better, which will bring back blighted areas. Thus their fear of Democrats and their plans to remake the US economy to fit the 21st century, while they also recast the language of the "woke" as just basic American fairness. Democrats appeal to both the pocket and the heart. Republicans appeal only to the reptile brain which controls our flight or fight responses.
Of course, the irony is that this is all for naught. As reported this weekend:
The National Republican Congressional Committee did not disclose internal polling that found dismal numbers for former President Donald Trump in key swing districts during the House GOP retreat in April, according to two sources who spoke with The Washington Post.
During a presentation at the Florida retreat, NRCC staffers reportedly withheld the information even when pressed by a member of Congress regarding Trump's support.
The polling data showed Trump's favorability ratings underwater, with his unfavorable ratings 15 points higher than his favorable numbers, according to The Post.
The voters in the districts the GOP is hoping to win to take back the House want nothing to do with Trumpism, and are satisfied with the job the Biden Administration is doing. The gnashing of teeth from the punditocracy that Democrats are doomed in 2022 is nothing but an effort to gin up clicks and viewers. The data—even the GOP's own data—doesn't support that view. By lashing themselves to Trump, the GOP is doing everything it can to go out with a whimper.
Be that as it may, however, the GOP is playing a dangerous game with our democracy. It's feeding a segment of the electorate the hatred and animus it craves, and downgrading loyalty to our democratic norms. Its cynicism would be laughable were it not so threatening. A state in which a large portion of its citizens no longer believe in its legitimacy is in a dangerous place. For filthy power, these hollow men and women are willing to traduce the Republic. This is no laughing matter.