A friend of mine recently commented, in the spirit of bridge building among people of divergent political associations and views, to the effect that the two major political parties collaborate on quite a lot and that both sides deny this actuality so as to advance their fundraising prospects. According to his argument, the practice of disingenuously stoking animus and fear is the fault of partisans “on both sides.”
Speaking as a guest on the Beg to Differ podcast this past Friday, former Republican stalwart George Conway made some observations that are highly relevant to my friend’s proposition. Conway said (in part):
I just think the [Republican] party is gone. I mean, the party needs to basically be destroyed, frankly, it is destroying itself. And I don’t think there’s any way that it can be repaired and I think Trump is going to take them down. The only way this turns out hugely badly for the republic is if these No Labels people, some third-party candidates, somehow manages to prop Trump up.
But it’s like crack, I mean, they’ve addicted themselves to these lies. They live off of these lies, the conservative media profits off of these lies, the political consultants profit off of these lies. The congressmen basically make a living selling these lies to the American people for contributions and funding—they’re lining their pockets or providing for their necessities of life through their PACs and whatever. There’s no way out, because they basically locked in a certain number of people to these lies. Ultimately, you’re going to end up with a core of the party that kind of eats itself up, and the rest of the party is just going to fall off and become independent to the extent it hasn’t already.
Conway is a patriotic small-d democrat, not a Democratic partisan. People who are both decent and sensible – of any political affiliation or none at all – tend to agree with him that this phenomenon is dangerously evident on one side, not both.
Decency and sense ought not be partisan. As Conway notes, however, it overwhelmingly and increasingly is. Current members of the GOP have every opportunity to join with their never/former Republican friends and acquaintances in recognizing this.
Never/former Republican friends and acquaintances do not (or ought not) impugn the integrity of every person who retains, even proudly, Republican affiliation. We ask only that such wake up to what the party has become and where it is going, rather than engage in or nod along with excuse-making, lame whataboutisms, and other deflections.
In commenting on my friend’s comment, I ticked off the following:
The credit rating agency Fitch this past week downgraded the United States on account of the debt limit hostage-taking that one of the parties perpetrated.
The promotions of 100s of senior armed services officers are being held up by a single senator from this same party, who is holding those promotions hostage – endangering U.S. military readiness – to his desire to restrict access to abortion.
The speaker of the House, a leader of this same party, has lately been prattling about the need to launch an impeachment inquiry against President Biden in connection with vaporous allegations of wrongdoing.
And then of course there is this same party's lying excuse-making deflection about the dangerous, disgraceful former president, his administration, and January 6.
These antics actively harm the country, both materially and in destabilizing and undermining our democratic institutions.
While it was all well and good on the part of my friend to allude to significant bipartisan successes, it is important to note the frequent practice of Republican members of Congress who denounced and voted against bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and later claimed credit for the resulting projects that popped up in their districts and states, all the while continuing to defame the Democratic Party with ridiculous smears.
In the context of all of this, my friend suggested that both parties – the "uniparty" in the parlance of the politically disaffected – are to blame for cynical posturing.
This false equivalence is deeply dangerous.
To make fact-based observations about the danger that the Republican Party represents is to engage not in manipulative fear-mongering but rather in essential consciousness-raising.
It is important that people of decency and sense insist on standards not just of civility but of truth.
While to both-sides in the name of bridge building may seem laudable, if successful it would engender an anesthetizing comity of error.