“Democrats embrace radical new message: ‘Government can function'” is the mocking headline AOL News ran on Friday, March 12, 2021. (See headline and read article here.)
It’s a jibe at Republicans, and they deserve it.
Reagan, who famously called government “the problem, not the solution,” and Grover Norquist, who vowed to “drown it in the bathtub,” have been followed by a parade of Republicans determined to do just that by making government as dysfunctional as possible. When they get elected, they don’t try to govern responsibly, but not at all. When they were out of power, GOP Senate leader McConnell said “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” and then led his party down a path of relentless obstructionism.
Along the way, the GOP’s government-hating supporters have accrued a reputation as a mob of unruly adults acting like children.
They call Democrats “radicals,” but in reality, they’re the radicals. Republicans are borderline anarchists who undermine the success, health, and safety of our society; compared to them, Democrats are models of civility, reason, and civic responsibility.
The above reads like a combination of political ad and partisan rant. In a normal political environment, it would be. But today, it’s just stating facts.
Think about what our country has gone through: Defiance of Covid-19 safety measures, armed militias taking over public buildings, an attempt to overthrow an election that included a violent insurrection, etc. Today, the entire Republican following are fringe lunatics.
Why talk about it at all? Because this country needs two competitive parties to keep each other honest, Democrats don’t have all the answers and Republicans used to be right about some things, and somehow we have to get that back.
Imagine a once-stout boat hull that wasn’t properly protected with anti-fouling paint, got eaten by shipworms, its keel corroded and fell off, and now it lies mired in harbor muck. If someone doesn’t fix it, its productive days are over, and it’s destined to rot away. That’s the condition the GOP is in right now. Democrats can’t fix it. Only Republicans can fix it. The rest of us can only encourage them to do so.