“I didn’t come here,” Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina complained last week, “to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy.” Tillis was referring to Republicans who were abandoning a deal on border security because they thought reaching a solution with President Joe Biden would hurt Trump’s electoral chances in the fall. It is immoral, Tillis added, to look “the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”
As Bruce Willis’s fictional cop John McClane would say: Welcome to the party, pal. In theory, Republicans care deeply about the situation on the southern United States border. In reality, most of them seem to care only about whatever Trump wants at any given moment, and what Trump wants is to take refuge in the Oval Office from his multiple legal problems. Tillis’s outburst, although welcome, was a rare moment of candor from a senior Republican senator about the degree to which the party’s once and future nominee has gutted the GOP of any remaining principles.
For years, Trump has attacked and obliterated anything like virtue in the Republican Party, a process that regularly features Republicans pulling their political souls from their bodies and handing them to Trump in jars for display on his mantle at Mar-a-Lago. (Ted Cruz going from the potential conscience of the 2016 GOP convention to a Trump-praising, phone-banking flunky is only one such example.)
TBH, if fascism has to rise, I’m glad it did with the most incompetent frace of a man it could have. Could you imagine if someone more intelligent or charismatic was heading this nonsense?
Of course it would be nicer if it hadn’t risen at all, but here we are…
Hitler was seen as incompetent and a joke. Its not as good as you hope. Its bad and trying to make it seem not so bad is worse.
More people need to realize this. Hitler wasn’t some brilliant strategist or genius. He was a failed artist who could give a good speech. And spoke to the hatred and bigotry that many of his fellow countrymen harbored. Much of his success was blind luck. And happening to have a few good strategists around him.
The biggest difference between MAGA and early nazi is there nationality, and the particular type of human failure they worshiped.
Maybe stupidity and lack of charisma is part of the winning combination though? I often make the argument you just made, but I’ve been questioning it a bit lately…maybe stupid and foul is necessary to gain power in the Republican party? 🤔
The thing is that a more competent politician wouldn’t have needed to go full fascist. Bush Jr got caught lying the country into two wars and we gave him a pass. Reagan got caught smuggling in tons of cocaine and it got shrugged off. I liken it to popping a giant zit, gallons and gallons of pus is running out, but it was always there just beneath the surface.