Death March
This talked-about Blue Wave has an important job to do. It’s not just a matter of getting control of the House so that Congress can begin to do its job in dealing with this monstrous President. It’s also about utilizing the disgraceful form that the Republican Party has taken (in this Republican President and in the “Trump Party” that’s become his accomplice) as an image to discredit and weaken that corrupt and destructive Party.
The idea that the repellant image of an individual “face of the Party” might destroy the Party as a whole has just been presented at the level of Virginia politics with respect to the morally and spiritually ugly image of the “vicious” Corey Stewart to be the Republican nominee to run for the United States Senate in this year’s election.
In an article titled “The Virginia Gop’s Death March,” the conservative Norman Leahy, on the website BearingDrift.com, makes just such a case. The racist, mean-spirited, Trump-like Stewart, Leahy says, is driving away support from donors, and jeopardizing the chances of three Republican candidates for re-election to Congress in Virginia.
Does the same argument hold for Republicans at the national level, with the equally thuggish and ugly Donald Trump playing the role that Stewart is said to be playing? Can the Trump card at last trigger the collapse of this Republican Party that has grown darker and darker over the past quarter century.
The picture of Trump’s ugliness gets fleshed out more every day (more lies, more betrayals of American values, more assault on America’s future, more criminality and corruption). Isn’t that part of what this Blue Wave has been about? People wanting their country to be so much better than that?
A powerful Blue Wave would be one way to utilize the tie between the Republican Party and Donald Trump to bring them both down.
The Mystery of the Republicans’ Full Submission to Trump
Of course, Trump’s position looks very different from Stewart’s. Trump is President, already elected, and that means he has great power, which a candidate for Senate does not. And because Trump has absolutely no scruples on how he uses his power, and because he’s accomplished the neat trick of turning his following into a cult, he can do a lot to defend himself, and to compel others in the GOP to serve him and not abandon him the way some in the VA GOP are apparently abandoning Stewart.
One thing seems ever clearer. The GOP has tied itself firmly to Trump. I am baffled by how firmly. It seems to me a strategic blunder.
Trump is obviously in some real peril, as the non-Trump side of the American system of power (the Mueller investigation, the Democrats, the media, the people in the streets of the Women’s rally and then the Parkland rally, the voters who are activated enough to come out and vote in Special Elections, flipping red to blue) mounts its counterattack against all the forms of brokenness that Trump and the Trump Party are inflicting upon the nation.
Given how possible it seems that the Titanic Trump will sink as it collides with a sea of icebergs, I am baffled as to why the Republicans have gone SO far — further than seems necessary — in tying themselves to Trump.
I can understand why they would not take any active measures that make them visibly in opposition to Trump. Trump has pulled off a bizarre achievement here, of being so obviously and deeply and multi-dimensionally WRONG for this nation to have as its President while at the same time maintaining the support of a large portion of the American electorate. And — as that portion of the electorate is also necessary for congressional Republicans to get re-elected, it is quite understandable that unprincipled and opportunistic Republicans would violate their apparently not-sacred oath of office and stand aside when the President’s corruption and criminality call for congressional action.
(We’ve seen how Republicans –Roby in Alabama, and Sanford in South Carolina– who had publicly sinned by criticizing the President have been punished by Republican primary voters.)
But I cannot understand why the Republicans have gone further than “not being seen hurting Trump” all the way to “being seen lying and obstructive justice to help Trump.” It wouldn’t seem to be required for staying good with the base. So why did they choose to make themselves complicit in Trump’s crimes?
Would it not have been safer for the GOP to keep maximal distance from Trump, lest they be sucked under when he sinks?
Am I missing something? (If someone sees how the Republicans choice is smart, I’d love to hear about it.)
The fact that I’m uncertain bears on the matter of whether we might get the Death March scenario that America urgent needs. I’m of two minds about what’s going on.
It seems obvious that standing aside, distancing themselves, and using passive aggression would have been the best way of protecting themselves with their voters, while minimizing the damage to the Republican Party to have inflicted this abominable President to the nation.
So, tying themselves so closely to Trump looks like a strategic blunder, then their choice might be the fruit of some kind of collective madness. (As Euripides wrote: “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”) Drawn to self-destruction, perhaps.
But the other mind is that somehow I’m missing the rationale for that decision. How plausible is it that a whole Party of professional politicians could make a mistake so obvious that one thinks in terms of a kind of madness.
So if not madness, then some rationale.
The idea that Trump can somehow coerce them into doing his bidding doesn’t seem right to me.
So perhaps they see some positive scenario for them in subordinating themselves to Trump. Do they see how tying themselves to Trump will help them gain more power, and thus enable them to continue to transform America into something worse along virtually every dimension?
Well, that’s where the Blue Wave comes in. If they do see a plausible scenario — in which they might join with Trump to it is up to the rest of us to close off that route with a resounding victory in November. Make sure their choice proves their undoing, by painting a picture of them that’s broadcast out to the American electorate that ties them to the ugliness they are abetting.
Show the Ugly
Trump might have the power that goes with being President, but that just means that more people are shown more of his unmistakable ugliness more of the time.
Trump is Stewart’s match in ugliness, and the challenge is to make Trump’s blatant ugliness as powerful an image in the political consciousness of the American people as Corey Stewart’s ugliness seems to be as it ramifies through the Virginia political world.
That’s how to get them on their Death March.
Trump provides abundant material, almost daily, for revealing of ugly a human being he is. The job is to do everything possible to make it powerful in people’s consciousness, so that some Republicans with a sense of decency walk away from it (like Bill Bolling in Virginia, with the nomination of Stewart), while some of the Republican base get demoralized for having something so ugly representing them on the public stage, and sit at home on Election Day (while those who love what’s best about America are inspired to generate that Blue Wave.)
(Is it possible that the Republicans’ taking this apparently reckless risk in tying themselves to Trump are signaling, indirectly, their contempt for the ability of Democrats to use even the grossest sins of their opponents effectively against them? This should be one of those moments of climax in the old movies when the hero –who’s not risen to the fight before– becomes stronger of heart and at last shows determination to defeat the antagonist.)
Trump has taken the brokenness of the right to much deeper levels, and this time Liberal America — as part of the alliance of all the anti-Trump, pro-Constitution side — must rise to the occasion and make the Republican pay the price.
So, the job is to drive the GOP onto its Trumpian Death March, and the means by which that can be done is to make vivid and powerful and clear the image of the ugliness of Trump and his accomplices– an image that is broadcast powerfully out into the American public –.
It calls for calling out the ugliness of corruption, of betrayal of the nation, of lawlessness, of contempt for democratic values and the Constitution, of arrogance, of cruelty, of sacrificing the nation to serve himself, and of course the constant lying and complete lack of integrity.
And it calls for bringing all those different forms of that Trump/Republican ugliness together into a single image, which will be the more vivid and powerful in people’s minds for being a single concrete thing (an ugly person), not just an ugly set of sins. A spirit made manifest by the darkness of all its manifestations.
The more that Americans can see the ugliness of Trump — an ugliness that is just as vivid as Corey Stewart’s) the more that Death March (that some now see with the Virginia Republican Party) will be this “Trump Party’s” rendezvous with Destiny. And with karma.
Sign up for the Blue Virginia weekly newsletter
