When They Show You Who They Are…Believe Them

We already know what the Republicans will do if they regain power.

Issue #46 An OpEd April 11, 2022

By Pamela Hilliard Owens

The Republicans have gone full racist, anti-everyone who they don’t “approve of”, and authoritarian on us. This is not your parents’ Republican Party. This is not the Republican Party of Dwight D. Eisenhower or John D. Rockefeller (a founder with his wife of Spelman College) and/or Nelson Rockefeller (funder of initiatives for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and civil rights workers). It is not even the Republican Party of Bob Dole or John McCain (Sarah Palin notwithstanding).

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Starting with Richard Nixon, and continuing through Ronald Reagan (along with Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker of the House of Representatives), and finally to Donald J. Trump, the Republican Party has become more and more racist and more and more power-hungry for power’s sake. (Bush 41 & Bush 43 were not really racist, although they were very “classist.”)

Now, of course, the Republican Party is also based on a cult of one personality, Donald J. Trump, who has openly professed his “love” for authoritarian dictators around the world, especially Vladimir Putin. For the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, the Republican Party declared that their only “platform” was whatever Donald Trump said/wanted.

In May, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) will hold its annual conference outside of America, in Budapest, Hungary, in order to celebrate Prime Minister Victor Orban, a longtime supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many far-right Republicans admire Orban for using his political dominance to push a conservative cultural agenda, from immigration crackdowns to restrictions on LGBTQ rights.

Mitch McConnell is dangerous for America

For as long as Mitch McConnell has been the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, whether as majority or minority leader, he has done everything he could to defeat anything the Democrats want to do for the American people. In advance of both of the impeachment hearings for Donald Trump, McConnell stated that the Republicans in the Senate would not vote to convict, no matter what the evidence showed.

Since Joe Biden took office in 2021, the Republicans have voted down every single bill passed by the House that would help Americans in any way.

Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has stated that if he is the next Speaker of the House, he will first kick all of the Democrats off all committees and then make sure the House Republicans spend all of their time impeaching Joe Biden for anything they can think of.

And let us not forget how most of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee treated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings and how almost all of them rudely turned their backs and walked in tandem out of the Senate Chamber after the voting was completed.

The Republicans are Showing Us Who They Are

We have to believe them. The 2022 midterm elections are coming up soon, and if the Democrats lose our very slim majorities in the House and/or in the Senate, the loss of our democracy won’t be far behind.

That is NOT hyperbole on my part. They’ve already let us know.