A healthy democracy requires healthy competition between healthy political parties. We don’t have that. Republicans fill our public discourse with stunts, grandstanding, and lies; there’s very little serious discussion of serious issues. Democrats aren’t perfect (no one is), but Republicans are pathologically awful. Examples abound, so the question is where to begin; the examples below are arbitrarily selected from today’s news feeds.
Example 1: “As homes burned in California on Wednesday, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) used the raging wildfires to blast Democrats by falsely claiming they had diverted FEMA funds to migrants” (read story here). Takeaways: Republicans are liars, will say anything for political advantage, and can’t be trusted to govern responsibly.
Biggs claimed “FEMA is an agency that probably needs to be revised, reorganized, and revamped” because “they diverted well over a billion, almost $2 billion, to illegal alien care and not emergency management care. So we’ve got a lot of things that we need to assess at the federal level.” That’s false, and Biggs is the last person you want interfering in FEMA’s management or meddling with its funding.
Example 2: This is the 21st century, but GOP political strategist Scott Jennings thinks like 18th century imperialists. Responding to Trump’s refusal to rule out taking over Greenland by military force, Jennings said, “Why not?” and tried to justify it by saying, “What Donald Trump is saying is we are not a shrinking violet anymore.” Takeaways: Republicans still have 18th century values and an exploitation mindset who can’t be trusted to command the military or with decisions of war and peace.
Example 3: Two weeks before Trump takes office, and as Congress reconvenes, what are Republicans talking about? Greenland, Canadian statehood, and investigating Liz Cheney. Takeaways: Republicans are constantly creating diversions from real issues, and aren’t serious about governing.
In general, Republicans take partisanship and politics too far. They play politics all the time, about everything, when what ordinary citizens need is practical problem solving. We need better Republicans than these.