A Different Breed of Republican

by Errington C. Thompson, MD

Do you remember those old cartoons with Snidely Whiplash and Penelope Pitstop? The villainous Snidely would kidnap our heroine and tie her to the railroad tracks (why was never quite clear). The cartoonish music began its crescendo and we knew the train was coming. Our clueless hero somehow figured out that Penelope was in trouble and saved the day just in time.

Today, once again, we have a standoff in Washington. Both sides claim that they don’t want to have a government shutdown yet, somehow, the government was shut down at midnight on October 1. Who’s to blame?

I wish I could tell you this was a difficult call. I wish could tell you there were pros and cons to both arguments, but there really aren’t. I wish I didn’t have to tell you there are villains and heroes, but there are.

Nothing but villains

On one side, you have the Republicans. They’ve controlled the House since 2010. They have passed no major legislation in those two-and-a-half years. Instead, they have passed at least 46 different versions of bills that basically state they want to defund or repeal the Affordable Care Act—also known as “ObamaCare.”

It is not that Republicans want less spending. They want NO government spending. Nothing-Nada! I believe that there’s something else going on here, something that we haven’t seen before. I think we have to go back to just after the 2008 elections to figure this out.

How it started

Political reporter Robert Draper reported in his book, Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the House of Representatives, that on the night of Jan. 20, 2009—Inauguration Day, when the country was about to embrace its first black president—powerful Republicans from the House and Senate, plus a couple of non-members, held an extremely high-level, four-hour dinner meeting. Sen. Mitch McConnell and future House Speaker John Boehner were not there, according to Draper, but those who were reads like an A-list of GOP heavy-hitters: Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint, Newt Gingrigch, and about a dozen others.

The bottom line? Republicans decided they were going to oppose Barack Obama no matter what he proposed. At the time, this meeting really didn’t matter, since both houses of Congress were dominated by the Democrats. But that wouldn’t last forever.

…and grew

Let’s fast-forward a couple of years. A little-known conservative congressman from Georgia named Lynn Westmoreland spoke at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, DC before the 2010 elections. He told the conservative group that he was ready to kick it up a notch. He decided that he was not going to simply oppose Obama; he was going to shut the government down.

He told his audience, “If the government shuts down, we want you with us.” Applause rang out throughout the auditorium. He went on to say, “We have put Band-Aids on some things that needed to be cleaned out. That is going to take some pain. There’s going to have to be some pain for us to do some things that we’ve got to do to right the ship.”

…and succeeded

Millions of Democratic voters sat out that election; some felt they’d done their job by electing Obama; others were disheartened by the Senate’s dysfunction in the face of Republican filibusters; still others, reeling in the midst of the Great Recession, turned their attention to their personal needs. And, on the other side, the brand-new Tea Party movement, supported by hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate patrons, were energized—and won the House.

The 2012 presidential election two years later was strange in many different ways. But when you look at the Republican Party, you simply have to scratch your head in amazement.

…and fell short

First, despite the Tea Party “movement’s” success, they chose Mitt Romney as their presidential nominee. Let’s think about that just for second. Mitt Romney was not a “movement” Republican, or even a very conservative one; he was not a particularly principled Republican, or a dedicated, strong “Party” man; he was simply a guy who had made a lot of money.

Compare him to George W. Bush: no matter what you thought of Bush, he was clearly a conservative Republican who had spent years honing his conservative credentials. Whatever the issue, you knew exactly where George W. Bush stood—right where all the other conservatives stood. And compared to George W. Bush, Mitt Romney was kind of milquetoast. He wasn’t loved by the Republican electorate, he was just “tolerated”—so it should come as no surprise that Republicans lost the 2012 presidential election as well as several seats in the House.

…and will ultimately fail

Now, when you sit back and look at the demographic makeup, and long-term trends, of the United States, the outlook for Republicans is really bleak. There’s clearly a surge of Hispanics who are tending more and more Democratic. African Americans are solidly aligned with the Democrats. American women, of all races, are turning to the Democratic Party; so are young people. Florida continues to look more “purple” by the minute. And what is really scary to Republicans is that even Texas does not look as red as it did four to eight years ago.

Congressman Paul Ryan, Republican vice presidential candidate, summed up the Republican problem like this, “The reason this debt limit fight is different is, we don’t have an election around the corner where we feel were going to win and fix it ourselves.”

We are facing a different breed of Republican. This is not a reasonable, thoughtful Bob Dole who took principled stands but believed that there was a purpose for government. It’s not George Bush who firmly took the reins of power to benefit his wealthy corporate friends. This is something completely different.

This is the Republican Party that believes that anything that comes from the government is inherently bad. They look at the Affordable Care Act as something akin to cocaine: they believe, and worry, that once the American people get a taste of Obamacare, they’re going to like it.

They know that the idea of never going bankrupt because of medical expenses will be very appealing to Americans—and these Republicans hate that concept. Because they understand that once people use Obamacare it will become like Social Security and Medicare—something you can never get rid of.

What has to be done

This is a different type of Republican. This isn’t Snidely Whiplash tying a girl to the tracks; this is a party planning to blow up the tracks, and the train, and everyone nearby. And to combat it, we are going to need something much more powerful than Dudley Do-Right to fix something so sinister and destructive. We’re going to need a supermajority of both houses in order to get this country moving back in the right direction.

In 2014 and 2016, we’re going to need to find excellent, determined, patriotic candidates to run against the new Republicans, and we’re going to have to work overtime to turn out the vote and get them into office.

That is the task we face.

~

On a personal note, I’m deeply saddened by the passing of Mr. Willie L. Shivers. He was 93, and a barber at Ms. G’s. Mr. Shivers was a nice man who seldom complained and always had a kind word for me. I didn’t know that Mr. Shivers was a World War II veteran, or that he was a Mason and a member of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church. All I knew, and know, is that he was a nice, pleasant man. At the end of the day, I guess that’s all you can ask for.

May he rest in peace. I know I’ll miss him.