Dec 7, 2023·edited Dec 7, 2023Liked by Robert Reich
Actually, the Republican party has been taken over by the ultra-wealthy ultra-right capitalists. At first, they did not like Trump, but they knew an opportunity when they saw one and saw that they could actualize their wildest dreams by supporting the degenerating Republican Party.
It began with Reagan, who taught distrust of Government in the name of "Freedom," a word many take to be uniquely American because of 1776. Unfortunately, it became a word used to oppress.
What is Freedom? It is the Freedom of the wealthy to go untaxed, it is the Freedom to buy machine guns, it is the Freedom to go bankrupt because of a lack of access to healthcare, it is the Freedom to drive 80 miles to work because there are no jobs in your hometown, it is the Freedom to be denied abortion, it is the Freedom to get shot at the supermarket.
The only way out of this morass is for a truly liberating DNC platform to go against the GOP: Taxation of the wealthy and of the corporations, universal affordable healthcare, sensible gun control, and abortion rights for all women. It's basically Bernie's message.
The one thing Trump’s Presidency has done, it has exposed that there are many racists, misogynists, antisemites, anti LGBTQ, fascists, and bullies in this country!
However the facts are the facts! We are all members of the human RACE! We all bleed red no matter what color we are. We all are pink on the inside. In the UNITED STATES, as of today, we have the freedom to choose which religion we want, who we want to associate with, who we want to vote for, what food we want to eat, etc…. We have all of these freedoms yet we take them for granted!
A Smart Man Once Said
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
Abraham Lincoln
If the current Republican base doesn’t want to be recognized as deplorable they need to break themselves free of the Trump mind meld and stop supporting America’s criminal empire, Donald Trump and his band of liars!
Chair of the House Oversight Committee, Comer Pyle, is Trump’s dog with a bone! He continues to waste the taxpayer’s money on his uncontrollable witch hunt to Impeach our President.
And then there’s Mad dog Mike Johnson, our new Speaker of the House! He is holding hostage an aid package for Ukraine. The only way they will support aid for Ukraine is if President Biden closes the border! Johnson is releasing 40,000 hrs of Jan. 6 video footage. BUT he said that they are blurring the faces of the MAGA attackers so that the DOJ can’t identify who they are! That is OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.
A week ago, House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington held his first hearing on the proposed debt commission, which seeks to cut trillions of dollars from critical programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and services that help the majority of Americans while NOT raising taxes on those who can afford to pay more: millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.
The Republican Party is anti American! Their leadership continues to SCREW THE PEOPLE………….VOTE BLUE!
What is rarely mentioned is how the Republican party devolved. From my point of view, the fascist, oligarchic, Orwellian nightmare that parades as the GOP today was birthed years ago by a host of pundits and activists who refuse to take any responsibility for their offspring. I'm talking about William Kristol, George Will, Karl Rove, Lewis Powell, Dick Cheney and yes, Liz Cheney, and many others, Republicans who engaged in demagoguery and normalized the perversion of our democracy. They crowned an executive who had lost an election by twisting the Constitution into a papier-maché in a 5-4 SCOTUS vote. They subverted our Democracy by promoting Citizens United. They stifled dissent, and even discussion, to pursue an illegal war against a country which did not attack us, capitalizing on "patriotism" to reap the political benefits of revenge for 9/11. These are the same vestiges of the culture war we fought in the 70's, when Americans who finally saw the light about our insane "police action" in Vietnam were branded as traitors and cowards, coincidentally with the most vitriol by a vice president who accepted a felony conviction and was hounded from office. The "amnesty, acid, and abortion" screamers morphed into Rove's "God, gays, and guns" crowd who later became the anti-woke MAGAts who managed to remove a Constitutional human right for the first time in our history. We have been riven apart by their maniacal anti-immigrant racism while they refuse to engagfe in meaningful immigration reform, preferring to merely stoke anger. We have been horribly divided by their insistence on protecting state-sponsored brutality against Black Americans. We are expected to passively accept their vision of a Christianized country. We should turn away from history's march in realizing full equality of human rights for citizens with two X chromosomes. None of these assaults on our freedom, our integrity, our proudly defended democracy would have been possible without the support and encouragement of these now-reformed or at least extremely quiet yet unrepentant Republican luminaries. The better angels of liberalism have been far too tolerant of these deviants, and now we have Trump and his army of Orcs to thank them for.
They are not Republicans. They are cultists fools along with Evangelical “Christians”
Good riddance! I have faith in the American people who voted for Biden especially women who will show up and vote for their personal freedom and democracy. VOTE!
I’m thinking that those who left because of threats were cowards anyway. The gerrymandering the repugs have done may backfire on them if voters have had enough. Let’s hope so anyway. This repug behavior is going to lead to the destruction of our country. Just as in hitlers time, a minority has gained dominance due to thuggery. Disgusting!
Odd how all Republican legislators have chained themselves to the Trump coattails. Now it’s only a matter of time before their careers also go down the drain in Trump‘s whirlpool of lies.
It is frightful to think about how this party use to be the party that gave us such greats as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Thomas Jefferson to name a few. It saddens me to see so many in the GOP leaving and what's worse, they are leaving because of death threats made against them and their family from members in their own party!! I never thought I would live to see the day that loud-mouth bullies, narcissists, and conspiracy nutters would be treated as though they had any sense!! We would never have given these idiots the time of day, let alone a seat in Congress or the White House!! What has happened to the American citizen? Have we become ignorant, complacent, immune? Why in the world did we not draw the line when trump descended down those stupid stairs? Didn't anyone see his ugliness, his narcissism, his contempt for good? I saw it and I tried my best to get my friends to see it but to no avail. He is a cruel dictator that has dragged what use to be a good, respectable party into the mire and muck with him. The one thing I wonder is if all of these republican politicians are leaving, I wonder how many of the republican voting public is also turning away from this lunacy?
"McHenry was one of the handful of House Republicans who voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in 2020." A sad day when accepting the results of the election qualifies as something to brag about.
"The Republican Party is in an integrity death cycle. As the GOP is taken over by Trump’s enablers and sycophants, the few remaining principled Republican lawmakers want out. As they depart, the Trump rot spreads."
"... the trump rot spreads"
this is the very argument i use to defend my decision to stay on xitter, Professor Reich, so i can present a more rational, thoughtful view on, well, everything, actually.
With BOTH PARTIES feeding from the SAME TROUGH, how does anyone expect any significant and meaningful change? I pretty much lost all hope after seeing what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders.
What is horrifying is that all the 't' supporters be they elected or voters are not stupid. Their talent is the ability to RATIONALIZE. How else can any sane person support 't' and or his agenda? Just think of all the "geniuses" through history who made idiotic decisions that backfired due to their uncanny ability to rationalize.
Thoughtful commentators have pointed out the similarity between Eisenhower's politics and those of today's so-called "liberals". My dad served under Ike in WWII, and held him in great respect. So did I. i supported Nixon at first because he had been Ike's VP. But I began to see through the persona he projected to the public. Watergate was the last straw. I was not prepared to believe the worst about Nixon, but Sam Erwin, though a Democrat (I had always considered myself Republican), was a man of strong principle and great integrity, and his work as Special Prosecutor convinced me of Nixon's treason against the Constitution. I was horrified that so many Americans wrote Watergate off as "just the way politicians are": I knew this political attitude would have consequences. Sadly, I was right. It is to this phenomenon -- the People's loss of the expectation of integrity in its leaders -- that I attribute the current death rattle of the republican Party. Yes, the takeover by Big Money has played a largely enabling role, but that role would not have achieved the level of degradation we see today if voters still demanded integrity. The recent hijacking of the idea of political conservatism has been made possible by public acceptance of dishonesty, graft, and corruption. Some Political Scientists say that a people becomes like its leaders, and the reverse is also true. When we see a return to a just, ethical, compassionate citizenry, we will see the reformation of political life. "We have met the enemy, and He is Us"!
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
Actually, the Republican party has been taken over by the ultra-wealthy ultra-right capitalists. At first, they did not like Trump, but they knew an opportunity when they saw one and saw that they could actualize their wildest dreams by supporting the degenerating Republican Party.
It began with Reagan, who taught distrust of Government in the name of "Freedom," a word many take to be uniquely American because of 1776. Unfortunately, it became a word used to oppress.
What is Freedom? It is the Freedom of the wealthy to go untaxed, it is the Freedom to buy machine guns, it is the Freedom to go bankrupt because of a lack of access to healthcare, it is the Freedom to drive 80 miles to work because there are no jobs in your hometown, it is the Freedom to be denied abortion, it is the Freedom to get shot at the supermarket.
The only way out of this morass is for a truly liberating DNC platform to go against the GOP: Taxation of the wealthy and of the corporations, universal affordable healthcare, sensible gun control, and abortion rights for all women. It's basically Bernie's message.
It's what 70% of Americans want.
The one thing Trump’s Presidency has done, it has exposed that there are many racists, misogynists, antisemites, anti LGBTQ, fascists, and bullies in this country!
However the facts are the facts! We are all members of the human RACE! We all bleed red no matter what color we are. We all are pink on the inside. In the UNITED STATES, as of today, we have the freedom to choose which religion we want, who we want to associate with, who we want to vote for, what food we want to eat, etc…. We have all of these freedoms yet we take them for granted!
A Smart Man Once Said
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
Abraham Lincoln
If the current Republican base doesn’t want to be recognized as deplorable they need to break themselves free of the Trump mind meld and stop supporting America’s criminal empire, Donald Trump and his band of liars!
Chair of the House Oversight Committee, Comer Pyle, is Trump’s dog with a bone! He continues to waste the taxpayer’s money on his uncontrollable witch hunt to Impeach our President.
And then there’s Mad dog Mike Johnson, our new Speaker of the House! He is holding hostage an aid package for Ukraine. The only way they will support aid for Ukraine is if President Biden closes the border! Johnson is releasing 40,000 hrs of Jan. 6 video footage. BUT he said that they are blurring the faces of the MAGA attackers so that the DOJ can’t identify who they are! That is OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE.
A week ago, House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington held his first hearing on the proposed debt commission, which seeks to cut trillions of dollars from critical programs, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and services that help the majority of Americans while NOT raising taxes on those who can afford to pay more: millionaires, billionaires, and corporations.
The Republican Party is anti American! Their leadership continues to SCREW THE PEOPLE………….VOTE BLUE!
What is rarely mentioned is how the Republican party devolved. From my point of view, the fascist, oligarchic, Orwellian nightmare that parades as the GOP today was birthed years ago by a host of pundits and activists who refuse to take any responsibility for their offspring. I'm talking about William Kristol, George Will, Karl Rove, Lewis Powell, Dick Cheney and yes, Liz Cheney, and many others, Republicans who engaged in demagoguery and normalized the perversion of our democracy. They crowned an executive who had lost an election by twisting the Constitution into a papier-maché in a 5-4 SCOTUS vote. They subverted our Democracy by promoting Citizens United. They stifled dissent, and even discussion, to pursue an illegal war against a country which did not attack us, capitalizing on "patriotism" to reap the political benefits of revenge for 9/11. These are the same vestiges of the culture war we fought in the 70's, when Americans who finally saw the light about our insane "police action" in Vietnam were branded as traitors and cowards, coincidentally with the most vitriol by a vice president who accepted a felony conviction and was hounded from office. The "amnesty, acid, and abortion" screamers morphed into Rove's "God, gays, and guns" crowd who later became the anti-woke MAGAts who managed to remove a Constitutional human right for the first time in our history. We have been riven apart by their maniacal anti-immigrant racism while they refuse to engagfe in meaningful immigration reform, preferring to merely stoke anger. We have been horribly divided by their insistence on protecting state-sponsored brutality against Black Americans. We are expected to passively accept their vision of a Christianized country. We should turn away from history's march in realizing full equality of human rights for citizens with two X chromosomes. None of these assaults on our freedom, our integrity, our proudly defended democracy would have been possible without the support and encouragement of these now-reformed or at least extremely quiet yet unrepentant Republican luminaries. The better angels of liberalism have been far too tolerant of these deviants, and now we have Trump and his army of Orcs to thank them for.
They are not Republicans. They are cultists fools along with Evangelical “Christians”
Good riddance! I have faith in the American people who voted for Biden especially women who will show up and vote for their personal freedom and democracy. VOTE!
I’m thinking that those who left because of threats were cowards anyway. The gerrymandering the repugs have done may backfire on them if voters have had enough. Let’s hope so anyway. This repug behavior is going to lead to the destruction of our country. Just as in hitlers time, a minority has gained dominance due to thuggery. Disgusting!
Odd how all Republican legislators have chained themselves to the Trump coattails. Now it’s only a matter of time before their careers also go down the drain in Trump‘s whirlpool of lies.
“Soon, any Republican lawmaker still possessing some integrity will also be gone.”
Alas, not enough integrity. “Yeah, it’s a mess, a cancer, and I’m out of here.” Giving in to the bullies by running away. Such integrity.
It is frightful to think about how this party use to be the party that gave us such greats as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Thomas Jefferson to name a few. It saddens me to see so many in the GOP leaving and what's worse, they are leaving because of death threats made against them and their family from members in their own party!! I never thought I would live to see the day that loud-mouth bullies, narcissists, and conspiracy nutters would be treated as though they had any sense!! We would never have given these idiots the time of day, let alone a seat in Congress or the White House!! What has happened to the American citizen? Have we become ignorant, complacent, immune? Why in the world did we not draw the line when trump descended down those stupid stairs? Didn't anyone see his ugliness, his narcissism, his contempt for good? I saw it and I tried my best to get my friends to see it but to no avail. He is a cruel dictator that has dragged what use to be a good, respectable party into the mire and muck with him. The one thing I wonder is if all of these republican politicians are leaving, I wonder how many of the republican voting public is also turning away from this lunacy?
"McHenry was one of the handful of House Republicans who voted to certify Joe Biden’s victory in 2020." A sad day when accepting the results of the election qualifies as something to brag about.
"The Republican Party is in an integrity death cycle. As the GOP is taken over by Trump’s enablers and sycophants, the few remaining principled Republican lawmakers want out. As they depart, the Trump rot spreads."
"... the trump rot spreads"
this is the very argument i use to defend my decision to stay on xitter, Professor Reich, so i can present a more rational, thoughtful view on, well, everything, actually.
With BOTH PARTIES feeding from the SAME TROUGH, how does anyone expect any significant and meaningful change? I pretty much lost all hope after seeing what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders.
Work to GET BIG MONEY THE HELL OUT OF POLITICS.
What is horrifying is that all the 't' supporters be they elected or voters are not stupid. Their talent is the ability to RATIONALIZE. How else can any sane person support 't' and or his agenda? Just think of all the "geniuses" through history who made idiotic decisions that backfired due to their uncanny ability to rationalize.
Which is why we must drown them in an overwhelming blue tide next November!
Thoughtful commentators have pointed out the similarity between Eisenhower's politics and those of today's so-called "liberals". My dad served under Ike in WWII, and held him in great respect. So did I. i supported Nixon at first because he had been Ike's VP. But I began to see through the persona he projected to the public. Watergate was the last straw. I was not prepared to believe the worst about Nixon, but Sam Erwin, though a Democrat (I had always considered myself Republican), was a man of strong principle and great integrity, and his work as Special Prosecutor convinced me of Nixon's treason against the Constitution. I was horrified that so many Americans wrote Watergate off as "just the way politicians are": I knew this political attitude would have consequences. Sadly, I was right. It is to this phenomenon -- the People's loss of the expectation of integrity in its leaders -- that I attribute the current death rattle of the republican Party. Yes, the takeover by Big Money has played a largely enabling role, but that role would not have achieved the level of degradation we see today if voters still demanded integrity. The recent hijacking of the idea of political conservatism has been made possible by public acceptance of dishonesty, graft, and corruption. Some Political Scientists say that a people becomes like its leaders, and the reverse is also true. When we see a return to a just, ethical, compassionate citizenry, we will see the reformation of political life. "We have met the enemy, and He is Us"!
The Congressional Oath of Office
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
It appears that God will have his hands full.