What I Learned About Republicans

I started to pay attention to politics in the 2012 election. It was mid-summer when I started to prefer listening to the news on NPR to audio books during the morning commute. I developed a fondness for the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. I remained a loyal viewer of The Daily Show. My sources favored the Democrats over Republicans. I found this comforting. I was part of the “in” group. This felt good. And I thought my newfound group was winning.

I remained hesitant though. I kept an eye on other sources and checked the accuracy of their claims. I couldn’t stomach Fox News. Everything they said seemed to be either unsubstantiated by any facts that I could find. And Fox News was in bed with the Republican Party’s money, which wasn’t journalism; it was propaganda. Their slogan, “Fair and Balanced,” was a farce.
I checked Google News for headlines. I checked other online channels to see if my beliefs held up. Every time I heard something disconcerting from MSNBC, I’d research it. When Rachel Maddow said that Paul Ryan supported a bill that would define personhood starting at the moment of conception, I checked it out. I read the bill. It really said that. And Paul Ryan’s name was on top. When Maddow said that Paul Ryan also supported a bill that would require forced sonograms on women before abortion, I looked it up. I read that bill too. And Paul Ryan’s name appeared at the top as a co-sponsor. After that, I started to build trust in what Maddow and others on the left were saying.
After a while the race crystalized for me. Republicans were no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln. They’d become a party of the extremes. Republicans were pushing to suppress voting in numerous states. They weren’t acting at all concerned about persuading Latinos, African Americans, and other minorities to vote for them. They were actively trying to legislate religious demagoguery over the rights of women. They were trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which will establish health and wellness for all Americans, instead of the lucky few. They were trying to make Medicare into a voucher system and cut Medicaid for the poorest among us. They were calling for military spending and beating the drum for war against Iran, Syria, and inexplicably against Russia. They wanted to cut taxes for everyone without explaining how they’d balance the budget with the loss of revenue. They wanted to cut spending on education. They wanted to abolish the EPA, build pipelines through protected wilderness, and start using coal without restrictions.
The Republican Party scared me.
The good news, of course, is that they lost. Badly. I stayed up late on Tuesday to watch the reports trickle in. I updated a spreadsheet on my wife’s laptop on the kitchen table, tallying up the electoral votes. At 9:15 PM, the news said Ohio had voted for President Obama, whereupon I danced around the living room. I hugged the cat. I gave the dog two chicken treats. I cracked open a beer and took a long, satisfied swig.
More good news came over the course of the election night. Democrats gained two senate seats and retained most other positions over their rivals. I was happy to learn that Elizabeth Warren won over Scott Brown. Brown had used both racism and criticizing Warren by calling her “The Professor” a few too many times in debates as tactics to run against her.
Over the last few months, clips from Todd Akin’s disastrous TV interview aired too many times to count. In the interview, he was asked his views on whether women who became pregnant due to rape should have the option of abortion. He stated:
Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.
I ground my teeth whenever I heard his mouth form the words “legitimate rape.” That phrase alone should make you wonder, how exactly could rape be legitimate? Legitimate means lawful. Lawful rape? I’m pretty sure there’s only one kind of rape, and it’s the unlawful variety.
An internet meme going around shows Akin’s picture, with the caption, “Todd Akin declared loser – When you’re a legitimate asshole, women have a way of shutting the whole thing down.” Sounds about right.
Of course, Akin wasn’t the only one who said something vile about women’s rights. Other Republicans with a bone to pick with half of the country’s electorate included:
Richard Mourdock (R-IN) – “In that horrible situation of rape, that [pregnancy] is something God intended.”
State Rep. Roger Rivard (R-WI) – “Consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry—some girls, they rape so easy.”
Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) – “In cases of rape and incest… I am still pro-life.”
Candidate Tom Smith (R-PA) – “Having a baby out of wedlock … is similar [to rape].”
VP Candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI) – The method of conception [i.e., rape] doesn’t change the definition of life.”
The happy fact that all six candidates were defeated doesn’t distract me from the fact that Republicans are against women’s rights.
Despite floundering with all their theocratic baggage, Republicans tried to focus on the economy with an incredibly vague plan to cut taxes for everyone and to create 12 million jobs, somehow. The problem with the strategy of always bringing it back to the economy, and how America is in dire straits, is that this is essentially betting against America. Whenever the economy or jobs numbers improved during the campaign, the argument for replacing President Obama weakened. Whenever the economy improved, Romney’s plan to overhaul everything became even weaker.
By the end of the campaign, betting on a losing horse wasn’t paying out. The unemployment rate had fallen to the lowest point since President Obama took office, the economy was starting to climb out of recession and improve, and the outlook looked good (ignoring the impending “Fiscal Cliff”). You can’t keep refocusing a campaign to say how horrible America is doing, when it’sactually doing better and better as time goes by. When Romney asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago,” most of America answered, “Yes, actually we are.”
Romney was rejected on his plan to change the direction of the economy from its current improving state. And all the other ugly issues that surfaced along the way over the long campaign made all of the Republicans look antiquated, ignorant, and malignant.
On the night of the election I flipped the channel one number up to Fox News to give myself perspective. The tone was somber and quiet. Megyn Kelly was trying to hold her sadness in. I almost felt sorry for her, as she tried to find out how it all went so wrong for their side.
I admit it. I gloated a little. I even gleefully laughed when Ohio was called in President Obama’s favor.
But the Republicans left a taste in my mouth that will linger for many years to come. They have so thoroughly and so devastatingly proven how baseless their moral compass is to mine, how persuaded and deluded they are by the alluring power of money, how corrupted and uncaring they are. I hesitate to discount anyone entirely based on party affiliation, but I will think long and hard before I ever check another box with an R next to it.
So I sat in my living room on Tuesday night with the glowing feeling that more than half of America saw what I saw. Maybe my country had some sense and wasn’t fooled as easily as I thought. I found myself cheering with the crowd in Chicago who waited for the President to give his victory speech. Perhaps I wasn’t alone in thinking that Democrats had the right idea. A sea of faces of all colors and sexes danced to raucous music. We all hoped to get a glimpse of our President take the stage.
Over the next coming weeks, months, even years, the Republican Party will ask itself what went wrong. Why did they lose so badly on so many fronts? Perhaps they’ll figure it out, and reform themselves from within, to truly start representing more Americans again. But until then, I’ll remain skeptical.
President Obama is more optimistic than me. On Tuesday night, while I finished the last of my celebratory beer, he said:
I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.