I don’t want to be anti-Republican. I really don’t. I think we need more than one viable party – maybe even more than two – so that there is a real check on power.

For years, there was somewhat of a back and forth, reasonable check on power with the Republicans and Democrats. What Joe Biden seeks now – bipartisanship – is now seemingly a pipe dream, but it used to exist to some degree at least, and the nation was better for it.

Now, however, we have a Republican party in disarray and self-destruction. It’s not healthy for any of us.

The way I see it is…conservatives have long argued for “liberty.” Sounds good, right? Well, “liberty” is code for individual freedom. For government staying out of people’s business (except in certain areas like abortion and same-sex marriage (!)).

This meant the government keeping its hands off the “rightful” earnings of the citizens (never mind that earnings are not truly “earned” but the robustness of which is largely based in the overall collective wellbeing of a society that does, despite all rhetoric otherwise, function as a collective).

So, lower taxes. To zero if you can get it there. But, oh, wait, we need a military to protect us from outsiders. There’s that. So we need taxes for that.

Otherwise, cut cut cut. This comes from people who have it made. Who have retirement funds set up. Who can afford health care. Who don’t need a social safety net. Who need taxes really, only for things like roads and bridges (but only to a degree, since increasingly, rich folks use the airways and other more elite forms of travel…so…maybe they’ll support a gas tax which is inherently regressive and taxes a much larger percentage of the low-wage-earner’s income than it does the rich folks’.)

Anyway…largely low taxes. That’s what they always wanted. Trump indulged them with his big tax cut for the rich. Points scored. Trump (despite his disgusting failings) served his purpose.

Couple this with rants about the deficit. We can’t have more social programs – helping out the poor and middle class – because it will grow the deficit!!!

Yes. This nation has a problem with the deficit…with the nation’s collective debt. No one knows for sure how this will impact our children and grandchildren, but the general consensus is that it can’t be good.

So, the GOP uses this as a rationale for outrage.

Until their guy (Trump) blows it up. Then…silence.

Until…the Dems are back in power and seek to govern and raise taxes to pay for the programs.

So, that’s the fundamental difference, historically, between Dems and Republicans. Dems believe in raising the tide that will lift all boats through taxing and spending. Republicans believe in individualism and every-man-for-himself (never mind that those who espouse this view were generally born with a silver spoon in their mouths).

Of course, there’s the trickle down thing. Where the Republicans say that lower taxes will encourage owners of businesses to “invest” in their employees by raising their salaries and benefits and thus “boats will be lifted” that way. This argument has repeatedly been shown to be bullshit. Owners pocket the money and the rich get richer. If all owners pocket this extra money (from not having to pay taxes), then there’s no competition between them in terms of paying higher wages/benefits and drawing employees. It’s a monopoly. In other words, trickle down economics is, as noted, bullshit.

So, where does that leave us?

The Republicans still are the party, purportedly, of liberty. Of hands-off government.

THE REPUBLICAN COALITION

Thus far, they’ve come to power through cobbling together an assembly of odd ducks, some of which even so, overlap in areas. Genuine respectable conservatives, who believe government should be minimal, while acknowledging some areas where collective taxation must exist for national survival. Evangelicals (who are anti-abortion and anti-gay). Wall Street types (who don’t want to be taxed). Aggrieved straight white males (who resent “uppity” Blacks, feminist women, and “illegal alien” immigrants who they perceive as treading too close to their “entitled” existence of power). The wives of straight white males (who enjoy privilege from the outflow of wealth from their husbands). Oh, and the military and law enforcement (because, well, funding and because that’s the macho thing to support). And a handful of others.

It’s been a delicate balance. Trump saw his opportunity. He knew what political populism was. He had seen it in the strongmen of the world (even when the strongmen had differing economic perspectives). He sought to win over all of the constituents. Low taxes for the rich. Anti-abortion for the religious.

But mostly, to gain power, Trump knew he had to rile up that large dormant part of the country – the aggrieved white male who saw his power waning. Who was losing his coal mining job to clean energy…his assembly line job to automation…his farming job to declining revenues (despite government supplements)…his parts manufacturing jobs to China. And now this white male, who had enjoyed so many glory days in the mid-20th century, rising through the middle class to have a nice home of his own with wife and children in tow, was bereft. Emasculated.

And Trump knew it. He played on this. These men…and their similarly aggrieved wives…became his base. His lovers. His people.

The rest of the GOP knew…and knows…that, without these aggrieved white Trump supporters, there simply won’t be enough of the base left to compete with the ever-growing ranks of the Democrats (who are growing through immigration, births, and, yes, due to their appealing focus on science and logic which seems to be the nemesis of the Trump contingent).

So they’re stuck. These Republicans may voice their disgust with Trump and his people in private, but they know they have to have those votes. Without the aggrieved white unemployed (or underemployed) white man in the Midwest voting for Trump, Hillary would have won in 2016.

The Republican party, then, is beholden to this contingent. This aggrieved, hateful, homophobic, racist, anti-feminist, anti-intellectual part of the party. It’s consumed them. They are what they consist of.

The evangelical movement in the country is in steep decline now, so there’s no hope for growth there.

The writing is on the wall about climate change and the auto industry and others are getting on board because of it, so jobs are changing or leaving.

Even Wall Street is not necessarily reliably Republican any more because they know that infrastructure and collective investment in at least some social programs matter.

After the January 6th violence at the Capitol, Republican voters began to change their party affiliation in droves. They were ashamed…utterly ashamed…to be associated with people, organized and egged on by Trump to violently attack the cops that Republicans have long defended, with their law and order, military platform.

Even the military is changing. When Matt Gaetz rudely questioned the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the military’s approach to addressing issues on race…even by exploring Critical Race Theory…GEN Milley put Gaetz in his place. The military, ironically enough, has been the vanguard of racial equality in this country. Maybe not for the right reasons – the need to beef up the ranks led to recruiting the underprivileged – but the military led the way for the country in terms of desegregation. Don’t f*ck with the military’s people. Don’t denigrate them. We serve you but we aren’t going to buy into this divisive racial rhetoric. It’s corrosive and destructive in the ranks. So there’s that.

Who’s left? Trump’s base. The racists. The bigots. The homophobes. The ignorant. Everyone else is fleeing. Yet this is who the GOP is. And the GOP reps in Congress know it. To stay in power…to avoid being “primaries” by Trump’s selected people, they have to bow to the altar of Trump. It frankly is unbelievable how much power this one man has over an entire segment of the country…although history has demonstrated that such strongmen have been successful (hence Trump’s adoration for Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi, and, yes, Hitler).

We know this is bad for the Republicans. Liberals can laugh and mock and be gleeful (though cautiously so, given their showing against Hillary Clinton).

But this destruction of the GOP cannot be good for our country as a whole either.

What is happening? Who will stand up? Who is righteous out there?

Rather than courageous Republicans like Jeff Flake, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger being rewarded for their integrity, the GOP primaries them or shoots them down.

It’s a puzzle that needs solving, but really can only be solved from within…and by the vote. Unfortunately, the Republicans beholden to Trump are attacking the right to vote too. At the grassroots level. If they can’t win by building their ever-declining, increasingly-homogeneous base, then they’ll suppress everyone else’s rights. They’ll seek to suppress information by having media mouthpieces like Fox News and ONE preach their rah-rah rhetoric to corral the ignorant.

And, though the Democrats control all parts of the federal government, somehow, Trump, out of power, still dictates the agenda. Still “governs” over the moral decline and decay of this country. He really is a one-man wrecking squad, dredging up and nurturing the grievances of a minority of this country.

Maybe it will take a few election cycles to rid the party of this cancer. Psychologists tell us that the power of charismatic demagogues typically dies upon their own death. There’s no one left to carry that cult of personality.

Of course, the GOP can’t bank on Trump forever. While the fire is hot…while the Democrats are ineffectual and divided…the Republicans are changing the very nature of democracy at the state level. If this isn’t stopped, this country’s election cycles – typically the fix for diseases like Trump – will be more akin to those in Russia. Democratic in name but not character.

And we will no longer be the America that our Founding Fathers aspired to.