Today’s Republican Party claims to be the only truly patriotic, fully America-loving and God-fearing political party in the country, the one that will protect regular America-loving and God-fearing citizens from the perfidies of big gummint and make the country, well, you-know-what again.  So, how are they doing with that today?

Well, as I write this we are just hours away from the gummint shutting down much of its operations because Congress cannot pass the legislation needed to pay the bills.  But not because the Congress and the president haven’t been able to come to a compromise: this past May President Biden and House Speaker McCarthy did agree on total spending levels through 2024.  It’s that some Republicans in the House refuse to accept the deal.  If there is no agreement by the deadline we can all look forward to enjoying life with only “essential services” from Washington.  If you are a government worker (as I was) who is deemed essential (as I was not), you get to keep working but not be paid for it; non-essential workers just get furloughed.

So much for Republicans looking out for the average, America-loving, God-fearing citizen.

What Republicans are doing instead of keeping the government running smoothly is kicking off an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.  Against whom they have no evidence – zero – of his commission of an impeachable offense.  Who brought witnesses who say they don’t see it, either:  Jonathan Turley, George Washington University law professor and Fox News contributor, said “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment.”  The same Republicans who screeched that Democrats were weaponizing impeachment against the former guy (who was as innocent as the day is long during his presidency, they insisted, and who is just being victimized by 91 criminal and civil indictments (so far) in his post-presidency) are only doing the Lord’s work in rooting out corruption in government.

The weird thing is, the same Republicans who are trying to use the mechanisms of government to impeach a president of the other party (albeit one who faces no substantiated allegations of any wrongdoing) are the same ones who by obstinately refusing to compromise on a spending plan will force much of that same government to close up shop for an indefinite period.  (Although, not Congress or their investigation.)  This is not, historically, what the Republican Party has been about.

The Grand Old Party was organized in the early 1850s as a coalition opposed to the expansion of slavery into new states and territories, and after the Civil War its majority in Congress –- the Radical Republicans -– passed laws to, among other things, protect the rights of freed slaves.  While Democrats in the South worked to chip away at the Reconstruction reforms, Republicans became more and more associated with the interests of business; some also supported (gasp!) progressive efforts for social reforms.

The growth of the federal government through the New Deal period and World War II encouraged more and more Southern Democrats who opposed civil rights for blacks (and other non-whites) and most expanded government programs to move to the Republican Party, where they joined up with conservative Christians stirred to action by opposition to “culture issues” that they were persuaded were threatening the “Christian nation” that God had intended America to be.  These elements came to control the party…or at least they did until they handed over the keys to a circus clown from New York.

Today those Republicans who are part of “MAGA nation” – polls say they are less than 25% of the nation as a whole — seem ever so pleased with themselves any time they get the opportunity to act-out as childish name-callers; one of their favorites is to brand a fellow Republican with whom they have some disagreement on a point of policy, no matter how trivial, as being a Republican In Name Only.  (How clever.)  But they are the real RINOs, who have succeeded in taking control of a once-respected political organization and philosophy and turned it into a vehicle (a clown car?) for instituting their warped social views into law.  It’d be a lot funnier if they weren’t so successful.