With the midterm election just weeks away voters are nervous and excited about the prospect of a “blue wave” election — a tide of Democratic candidates who take over enough seats in Congress to flip the majority rule in at least the House, if not the Senate as well. In fact, it’s not just Democrats who want to see this happen. The GOP has seen a number of high-profile resignations from the Republican Party itself, almost always accompanied by a declaration that the person intends to vote for Democrats and encourage others to do so as well.
It’s no secret as to why this paradigm shift is taking place: Donald Trump has turned civil discourse, concern for facts, and the very idea of fighting corruption in government in its ear. He shamelessly takes money from American taxpayers to go golfing at his own resorts, which make him more money every time he visits them. He assigns derogatory nicknames for everyone he doesn’t like and all of his political adversaries. He lies on essentially a non-stop basis.
Generally speaking, that should only be enough to drive people away from him, and not necessarily the Party he ran with — but unfortunately, the Party has decided to line up behind him as a general rule.
Some, however, take it a little more seriously. The darkest aspect of the Trump presidency has, of course, been the fact that he’s hired so many outspoken white supremacists to advise him and serve alongside him. Seeing this has encouraged more people of the same stripe to run for political office.
Obviously, there were some white supremacists in office before Trump came along. In fact, last year, former House Speaker John Boehner told Politico in a lengthy article about the demise of “his” Republican Party,
We’ve got some of the smartest people in America who serve in the Congress, and we’ve got some of the dumbest. We have some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet, and some that are Nazis. Congress is nothing more than a slice of America.”
Plenty would disagree that Congress is actually a “slice of America,” seeing as fewer and fewer non-millionaires can even run for federal office anymore. But strictly along personality lines, Boehner’s not wrong.
And since the rise of Trump? That slice has gotten wider and wider.
There’s an incumbent Congressman in Iowa, Steve King, whose name you know, but who you keep forgetting about because he doesn’t actually do anything politically, he just says really racist things every once in a while that make the news. There are plenty of upcoming candidates who will be in the midterm election on the ballot who would feel right at home standing next to the alt-right stormers who murdered Heather Heyer at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville.
And it’s not like these guys are all from southern states that used to be saddled with provisions of the Voting Rights Act until the racists on the Supreme Court decided racism was dead:
- John Fitzgerald is running in California’s 11th District — he denies the Holocaust happened and says Jews are taking over the world.
- Seth Grossman is from New Jersey’s 2nd District and believes that black people are inferior to whites and that “diversity is a bunch of crap and un-American.”
- Arthur Jones wants the seat in Illinois’ 3rd District and an actual former leader in the American Nazi Party.
All Republicans, of course. Boehner knew then, and we know now: The GOP of today is lost, and it’s our duty to make sure they lose again.
Featured image via screen capture
