I have never been especially partisan, and, I eschew all overarching, systematic ideologies. But I have become increasingly antagonistic towards the modern Republican Party. To my mind, it has become a force for great evil, and especially since 1969. It is a shame, for it was once and for many years the more liberal-minded of the two major parties, in several respects prior to the New Deal, and most particularly after the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s. President Nixon subverted the constitution for his own paranoiac and grandiose ends, and he prolonged an unjust war, costing many thousands of American and Vietnamese lives. President Ford pardoned him for his high crimes, perfectly legal, and also perfectly immoral on the latter's part, placing, in effect, a president who committed heinous acts above the law. President Reagan is guilty of treason, if not in a direct sense, then from having looked the other way while people in his administration consorted and traded arms with our enemy, Iran, and, to this day, his failed "voodoo economics" policies (as once described by his future Vice President) of fiscal mismanagement, buying on credit, and spending with abandon continue to haunt us. President George H.W. Bush was most likely a co-conspirator in President Reagan's perfidy with Iran, though he was the more responsible of the two as a fiscal manager. His son, the war criminal President George W. Bush, took us into an ill-conceived and unjust war based on false pretenses, and it cost many thousands of lives, this quite aside from the incredible harm that his wars and irresponsible tax policies did to our economy. And today we have a fascist leading the party in Donald Trump, and the party functionaries and the majority in Congress enable him out of sycophancy, self-dealing, and simple cowardice.
The Republican Party is anti-science, anti-women, anti-LGBTQ, racist, anti-financial prudence, and a perfidious force; an unholy alliance among gun fetishists, religious fanatics, media bullies, racists, jingoists, and corporate welfarests, and one that perpetuates ignorance, intolerance, fear, and corruption. The small number of remaining rational people, those who have not fled to become unaligned or to another party, hope to contain the rabble and feed them just enough long enough with red meat to bring them out to vote against their interests in favor of theirs every election cycle. Then the establishment assumes they can insert their rational man n the end, a McCain or Romney or the like, and retain some semblance of control. Trouble is, as the saying goes, one can hold the tail of the alligator and feed it only for so long before it eats you. And it is doing so now ... and the prisoners have taken over the prison. Lyndon Johnson wisely predicted he (the Democratic Party) would lose the south upon passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the sixties. And so it was, and the Republican Party in a few decades was transformed into a party dominated by erstwhile Dixiecrats, in essence, a modern Confederate Party, one with many of the essential characteristics of historical fascism.
I would like to see the Republican Party implode, and from the debris one would hope that a responsible, center-right party might eventually rise, the kind of party that it once was, and one that we need as a countervailing force. I have profound issues with the Democratic Party, but I count it as the much lesser of two evils. To my mind, the national Republican Party must be marginalized and, ultimately, destroyed. Although there is a tiny minority of rational and attractive Republicans on the national scene, regrettably, they, too, must be defeated at the ballot box at every turn, for even otherwise reasonable candidates are ultimately beholden to the cynical party apparatus and leadership for their political sustenance. It is almost impossible for reasonable men and women to succeed in the Republican Party, and until a new party is built to allow such people, I believe the party must be brought to its knees.
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