Being a Republican used to be a respectable political position.
My mother was an avid Republican. Until I went to college, I shared her conservatism. I grew up reading National Review. William F. Buckley was only one of numerous noted Republican intellectuals. Back then, Republicans believed in conserving the environment, which fit with their conservative principles.
Now, in the Age of Trump, Republicans should rename themselves as the Know-Nothing Party. (Yeah, I know, that name was taken in the 1850's, but it's time to resurrect it.)
There's so many examples of Republican craziness, I'm going to limit myself to two recent instances that have caught my eye.
The Senate confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination put Republican weaknesses on full display. I watched enough of the questioning by Republican Senators to be able to say with complete confidence that each and every one of them is either clueless or a liar.
Or, both.
Jackson completely demolished their pitiful attempts to make her sentencing of people convicted of child pornography offenses into a political weapon.
Every knowledgeable neutral legal observer, including the American Bar Association, has found that Jackson is both eminently qualified and has sentenced child pornography criminals in accord with accepted standards.
But that didn't stop Ted Cruz, John Hawley, Lindsey Graham, and other Republican senators from shamelessly lying about Jackson's record as a judge, which clearly is exemplary.
Their hypocrisy is breathtaking, since they ignored credible accusations of sexual misconduct against Bret Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court nomination hearings, while trying to make Ketanji Brown Jackson look like a pedophile-lover, an obvious attempt to curry favor with the insane fantasy of QAnon followers that leading Democrats are engaged in sex trafficking of young children.
Clarence and Ginni Thomas
Then there's the breaking news that Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent text messages to Trump's Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, urging him to overturn Biden's free and fair election victory so Trump could remain office.
In the weeks between the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, sent a barrage of text messages imploring President Donald J. Trump’s chief of staff to take steps to overturn the vote, according to a person with knowledge of the texts.
...The text messages, most of which were written by Ms. Thomas, represent the first evidence that she was directly advising the White House as it sought to overturn the election. In fact, in her efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, Ms. Thomas effectively toggled between like-minded members of the executive and legislative branches, even as her husband, who sits atop the judiciary branch that is supposed to serve as a check on the other branches of government, heard election-related cases.
Pretty big deal. The Republican wife of a Republican Supreme Court Justice is engaging in an effort to illegally hand the presidential election to Republican Donald Trump. Imagine if the spouse of a Democratic Supreme Court Justice had attempted this sort of crap.
There would be cries from conservatives that the Justice should resign, or at least recuse themselves from any Supreme Court cases involving election law. But almost certainly there will be silence from the cowardly Republicans in Congress, because they are afraid of offending their Putin-adoring authoritarian-wanna-be, Trump.
For sure there are many decent, reasonable Republicans. However, so long as they choose to remain in their party, they're supporting underhanded Republican efforts to subvert democracy and undo many of the rights supported by a majority of Americans, like same-sex marriage and abortion.
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