THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
The Republican Party (Grand Old Party or GOP), has historically focused on benefiting businesses and the elite, wealthy, class in the United States, while the Democratic Party’s focus has been on the people of the Nation. The GOP theory is that if you take care of the wealthiest class, as corporate owners and the most prolific spenders, they will create jobs that will “trickle-down” to everyone else, to the benefit of all. This concept was labeled “Reagonmics” back in the 90s. In its day, it worked, but as globalization flourished and automation became more and more prevalent, millions of jobs went overseas when those business owners realized they could get labor a fraction of the cost they could here in the United States. Their core policies prior to trump has been, smaller Government, lower taxes, and National Defense, voter suppression.
Historical Basic Tenets of the Republican Party
1) Smaller Government – While this may sound like a fiscally sound component, the truth lies in less Government regulation on corporate America. Corporation in this country has proven it will do whatever it takes to increase their bottom lines, and less regulation means more profits, which eventually filter down to large campaign contributions and more votes for Republican candidates.
2) Fiscally Conservative – They fight tooth and nail against Democratic spending, but when in power (trump era) they have outspent recent administrations considerably. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidate donald trump promised he would eliminate the nation’s debt in eight years.1 Instead, his budget estimates showed that he would actually add at least $8.3 trillion, increasing the U.S. debt to $28.5 trillion by 2025, however, the national debt reached that figure much sooner. When President trump took office in January 2017, the national debt stood at $19.9 trillion. In October 2020, the national debt reached a new high of $27 trillion. That’s an increase of almost 36% in less than four years. A decent portion of that went for tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. So much for fiscally conservative.
3) Voting Restrictions – In their efforts to make elections ‘safer and fairer” as they put it, for decades they have taken every possible step imaginable to restrict Democratic voters from access to the polls. This does not make an election ‘safer’ and it does quite the opposite of making them ‘fairer’.
Present Day Tenets of the Republican Party
Today’s Republican Party is more concisely identified as the Party of trump, and has demonstrated it has three main goals; 1) To do whatever it takes, however immoral, illegal, or otherwise wrong to capture power in the Congress and the White House. 2) To quash by vote, any and all bills presented by Democratic entities designed to provide benefits to the people and propel our country to a prosperous and dynamic future. 3) To reduce the number of Democratic voters through whatever means possible. A quote by Mitch McConnell on 5/11/2021 went “The Republican Party will do everything within its power to prevent the Biden agenda”. Now, whose interests does he represent with a statement like that?
Just after the election of Barrack Obama in 2008, Mitch McConnell publicly stated that the Republican Party’s #1 goal was to ensure that Obama is a one-term President and to literally block as many bills as they can that he tries to get through Congress. While the GOP was unsuccessful in preventing the second Obama term, they did have a good deal of success at blocking many of his bills.
Then in 2016, along comes donald trump, and any semblance of “a Government for the people” by the Republican Party evaporated. As trump accumulated a very devoted base of voters, that for reasons no one can precisely nail down, he literally “owned” the Republican Party because they could not risk alienating trump’s base, evoking trump’s public wrath, which he was always very quick to deliver. There are presently over 450 (+/-) House-passed bills that would have greatly benefited the people of the United States that Mitch McConnell has refused to bring to the floor for a vote, essentially killing them on the spot without even a vote. On Jan 5th, 2021 inauguration day, trump contested the validity of his losing the election to a second term and attempted a coup. After multiple recounts in all jurisdictions, all judges, election authorities, governors, and election workers, confirmed that the election was won by Biden, fair and square. They deemed this election the most secure and accurate in history. trump, beyond the shadow of a doubt, did not win. Creating doubt about the legitimacy of how our Democracy functions, the Republican Party got on board trump’s claim, and to this day, collectively claim the election was stolen. It has come to be known as ‘The Big Lie’. Thorugh trump’s term in office, Republicans have looked the there way and remained silent about all the crimes and failures that trump has brought upon our nation during his term in office.
While there are at least a few level-headed Republicans out there, Rep Liz Cheney, Senator Mitt Romney and Governor of Ohio John Kasich, the rest of the Republican Party lays low and lets trump do what he’s doing, still currently attempting to overthrow the Government of the United States. 163 U.S. Congressmen and 17 Republican Governors (as of 12/10/20), have participated in a futile lawsuit to get the Supreme Court to void the election and install donald trump as President. This is tantamount to treason.
The success of the Democratic candidates that won in Georgia makes a clear statement to the Republican Party that we the people, will not tolerate this kind of treason from our Congress. Do not let propaganda, fake news, or Fox News convince you otherwise.
