Stop those crocodile tears about the demise of the Republican Party. Stop right now.
People who haven’t voted for a Republican since Reagan or before are singing a sad song about how the GOP has been captured by its worser angels.
Sunday’s pundits pretty much wrote off the GOP and wondered what comes next. The party is fractured, they said. The GOP has become the Party of Trump.
But 74.2 million people (who voted for Donald Trump in 2020) are not racist fanatics who want to destroy American democracy. They are the folks next door, the people you see dropping off kids at school and donating to food banks. They are the neighbors who go to church and (mostly) drive the speed limit.
Get some perspective, people.
What’s next?
Georgia, 2021.
Republicans nominated two of the worst candidates imaginable – Wall Street insiders whose first reaction to the pandemic was to adjust their portfolios. The Democrats nominated a Black preacher and a young man who took the fight straight at the incumbent. Lest you forget, watch this clip. Full debate here.
Stir in a dab of Donald Trump’s election eve whining about how Georgia’s Republican governor and secretary of state had somehow cheated him out of a deserved win just two months earlier. Season with Trump proposing a $2,000/person stimulus check just after his Senate nominees Perdue and Loeffler had signed on to a $600/person check, negotiated by Trump’s own treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin.
Result? Two Democrats won Georgia, tipping the U.S. Senate to Democratic control.
Then what’s next?
We may see similar dysfunction in 2022 while Republicans sort things out, but by 2024, the GOP will be back. (The House of Trump will be broke and in shambles.) Republicans have never lacked for candidates for high office. Maybe we’ll see a ticket of Ted Cruz and Liz Cheney. Texas and Wyoming. It worked twice before.
Rand Paul and Glenn Jacobs
Maybe we’ll see Rand Paul and Glenn Jacobs, but the little guy would have to stand on a stool.
Maybe we’ll see … two folks we don’t even know yet. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, the reports of the demise of the Republican Party are greatly exaggerated.
Sandra Clark, editor/CEO of Knox TN Today Inc., is pinch-hitting for Frank Cagle, as he tends to medical treatments.