Carly Fiorina's Revealing Calculus
Carly Fiorina's Revealing Calculus
The GOP would sooner host a #CountryOverParty than put country over party.
File under "things that should be an Onion headline, but aren't":
Although in any universe where this could be an Onion headline, it wouldn't make sense because Donald Trump wouldn't be president if the GOP were any less than all-in on him.
With the headline grabbing focus there's one aspect of Fiorina's stance on Donald that has attracted less attention, and that's her saying that she doesn't know if removal makes sense "this close to an election". You might recall this logic played a part in Mitch McConnell's counter-Constitutional decision to withhold a Supreme Court seat from our (twice!) duly elected executive, President Obama. "Let the American people have their say!" is a convenient rallying cry from the minority power that protects an electoral system that systematically disenfranchises people in their favor.
And of course we're also told that impeachment "overturns an election" which provides a convenient reason for why we couldn't take action too soon after an election.
And of course none of these considerations will be considered or applied in the event that, despite their machinations to ensure single-party rule, we wind up with a Democratic president. The GOP is playing for all the marbles and they play for any point that is in their favor, and to block any point made against them.
When Carly Fiorina says she'd have to see who the Democrats are running against Trump, what she means is: are they running a Republican? Are they running someone close enough on the Republicans on enough issues and tractable enough on the others that they can spend 4-8 years advancing their issues exactly as if they were in power anyway, or failing that, at least not lose any ground? If this is not the case, then she perceives the harm caused by leaving Trump in office to be less than the damage done by allowing Democrats to wield any power at all.
This is the party of Trump because he moved in and claimed it, but the modern Republican Party was built by men like Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist, like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, men who weaponized and politicized hypocrisy in single-minded pursuit of a country permanently under the heel of a minority party. This is what we're dealing with: a party that does not recognize the right of any other party to exist.
On the other side of the aisle, it seems like you can't get close to the highest offices as a Democrat without mouthing platitudes about working with the other side. No matter how horrified we are at what the Republican Party has become, we wouldn't be Democrats if we didn't believe in democracy. No Republican president -- and I include in this measure Donald Trump -- has faced the kind of obstruction that President Obama faced, and which every Democratic president in the future can expect to face so long as the Republican Party hangs on in its current form. We watched as a state government under the control of George W. Bush's brother deflected the 2000 election to a Supreme Court that appointed him president and we still granted the basic premise that he was president while he held the office.
Donald has had the leaders of the Democrats in the House and Senate both willing to sit down and work with him on deals regarding his legislative priorities... deals which were, in some cases, torpedoed by the Republicans simply because making progress with the Democrats at the table would be seen as handing them a win. The Republicans reject the idea that Democrats can have a role in governance even when the Democrats hold the majority. Then they turn around and talk about respecting the will of the people?
It's all a sham. To the Republican Party, the Republican Party is America is the people. It will be their will that shapes the future, or no one's. Their way or the highway. And also highways are probably socialism, but high speed rail is communism. The points don't matter and the facts are made up.
Carly Fiorina recognizing that Donald Trump goes too far to be prudent but not wanting to replace him unless she gets to pick his successor is par for the course with all the "Never Trumper" pundits who are willing to do whatever it takes to save the Republic, so long as it begins and ends with teaching Democrats how to be the same party that put Trump in office.
If we fail to remove him by 2021, it won't be because we didn't listen to them (though they will say that it is).
It will be because they did not do what it takes, because the GOP plays to win at any cost, including the cost of the republic.
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