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But then, this is just what it means to be a Republican politician now. Accountability is out, distraction is in. You don’t deal with problems, you make them fodder for zero-sum partisan conflict. As president, Donald Trump refused to treat the coronavirus pandemic as a challenge to overcome with leadership and expertise. Instead, he made it another battle in the culture wars, from whether you wore a mask to whether you remained away from public places. He spent more time trying to racialize the virus for cheap points — calling it the “China virus” and the “kung flu” — than he did giving guidance to the American public.
Yes, Trump is an easy target. But you’ll find the same dynamic at all levels of Republican politics. At no point during the Georgia Senate race, for example, did the Republican candidates, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, produce a platform to rival the detailed policy proposals of their Democratic opponents. Instead, they ran on fear, identity and fealty to Trump. “Are you ready to keep fighting for President Trump and show America that Georgia is a red state?” asked Loeffler at one campaign stop. “We are the firewall to stopping socialism, and we have to hold the line.”
This turn away from even the appearance of traditional governance is most apparent among the newest members of the House Republican caucus. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, also of Georgia, is a glorified social media influencer, seemingly more concerned with making content for fans than bringing aid or assistance to her district. And shortly after taking office, Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina announced to his colleagues that he would be building his congressional staff “around comms rather than legislation.”
In his Inaugural Address, President Biden urged “unity.” This wasn’t a call for bipartisanship. It was a plea to “lower the temperature” and to “see each other not as adversaries but as neighbors.” Politics, he said, “need not be a raging fire destroying everything in its path” and “every disagreement doesn’t have to be a cause for total war.”
Biden’s appeal stands in stark contrast with the reigning ethos of the Republican Party as it exists today. Nothing, not even a deadly crisis, will turn Republicans away from a politics that rejects problem-solving in favor of grievance-mongering.
Our system has room for two major political parties. One of them, however imperfectly, at least attempts to govern. The other has devoted its energy to entertainment. It is a tragedy for the people of Texas that at this moment of danger, they have to deal with a government of showmen.
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