Who expected that Barack Obama winning the presidency would contribute mightily to the gutting of the GOP? Certainly not I.
Eight years ago, slightly over half the American electorate celebrated the election of our first non-Caucasian president. Sure, slightly under half were dazed & distraught, but who would have envisioned they'd become so wildly unhinged?
What was ballyhooed as being a "post-racial" era - highlighted in 2013 by SCOTUS rolling back parts of the Voting Rights Act because protections were no longer needed in this new & enlightened age - turned into a return to a racially-charged America.
Instead of a new civility & sense of national pride in our diversity, resentments simmering for decades came to a roiling boil. States passed Stand Your Ground legislation, which seems to apply only if you shoot someone of color. In the name of protecting us against virtually non-existent voter fraud, they did what they could to limit the vote among the poor, the aged, the disempowered - driver's licenses required to vote, NRA membership card okay, but not a government-issued government assistance card, not a student id. All sorts of methods to increase the vote were tossed or restricted.
Politicians & pundits argued that because we were in a post-racial era, it was okay to come out with racist statements. Over the past eight years, an argument has taken traction that says forcing someone to not be racist, if that is in your mind & heart, is reverse racism. Post-racial America, we were told, opened the door to speaking what we truly believe, without the shackles of being pc. Republicans started to embrace Martin Luther King, JR as one of their own, because he would have supported their right to speak their true mind, to live from what is in their heart. They said JFK would be a Republican if he were alive today, tried to appropriate Bobby Kennedy's legacy, before realizing his kids might make things too hot if they tried to high jack his social heritage the way they had MLK's.
For eight years, the GOP became a perversion of the conservative movement, became something that would have horrified William F. Buckley. For eight years, every social issue of the past 50+ years was reanimated, with white-hot animus. Civil rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, gender rights, even the Civil War - issues we took for granted as settled came roaring to the fore.
People who had been put on mute for half a century let loose with a barrage of fury & fear & undisguised hate.
Well, we're near the end of the Obama presidency. The Democratic party not only still stands, it's more FDR than Bill Clinton, starkly progressive, standing tall against social & economic injustice, united in following the first African-American president with the first woman. Over those eight years, the GOP became something we could never have imagined in November 2008. They were so angry over changing times, they tore out their own guts. Elected officials forgot how to govern, how to lead, and came to the sorry place they are today, putting party before country. Under Donald Trump, today's GOP is anti-Establishment, anti-corporate America, anti-foreign engagement, even anti-Wall Street, while its the Dems cheering USA!, speaking of America as having exceptional citizens capable of exceptional accomplishment, of a bright future where we are #1 as a progressive power for good.
Donald Trump didn't create this hellish version of the Grand Old Party, he just popped the cork off an already well-shaken bottle of political soda pop. What will be left in the bottle come six months from now will be interesting to see.
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