Republicans Gift to Democrats

As President Biden prepares to deliver his first State of the Union address tonight and Republicans begin to investigate parents of transgender children for child abuse, I figured it would be a good time to ask - what exactly is Republican’s plan for America should they take back control in 2022 or 2024? So lets dig in to their recently announced plans.

Last week Senator Rick Scott released the Republicans 11 Point Plan to “Rescue” America. This document is a gift to Democrats for the mid term elections, and it’s quite frankly a laundry list of culture war wedge issues that are hugely popular with the far right echo chamber of Fox News and the Republican Party. It’s a manifesto of classic Republican ideas mixed in with some Christian and White Nationalism. Importantly given this recent poll - people seem to think Republicans are better for the economy. So what do they plan to do?

In an attempt to keep this on the shorter side I will not be covering every point, and there’s some off the wall stuff in it I won’t touch on. You can read the actual document here (mirrored here), as well as some additional coverage here.

To be quite frank this is an 11 point plan of fascism, bigotry, racism, transphobia, isolationism, xenophobia, and the list goes on. Let’s go into some of the finer points…

Speaking Out

I’ve followed politics most of my adult life, and I actually enjoy the inner workings of the US government and how it functions. I used to stay fairly quiet about it and my views on issues. I was an informed observer. But over the past six years that’s changed drastically for me. I wanted to write a post and explore why that is and my reasoning behind it.

In my view of todays politics, it is not about liberal vs conservative, democrat vs republican, or left vs right.

It is about right vs wrong, it is about truth and lies, it is about decency and outright filth.

For the most part, I am not speaking out on Republicans anymore. I am speaking out on people who got behind the cult of personality, and believe literally everything he says. I am speaking out on the the absolutely authoritarian tendencies of todays Republican Party. I am speaking out against a party who considers a violent insurrection, and beating first responders with thin blue line flags to be “legitimate political discourse”

Donald Trump brought out the absolute worst in people. He’s divided this nation more than it’s been in generations and on top of that, we’re dealing with multiple realities today. I am speaking out on the lies and blatant misinformation whether it be people STILL claiming Trump won in 2020 or that critical race theory is even something taught in public school.

Democracy Requires Compromise*

As we enter a new era in US politics there’s a tendency for an all out battle of us vs them. And rightfully so, the last four years have felt like four decades for many of us. In a democracy, compromise is needed to accomplish almost anything. But on the flip side, there are some things that there should be absolutely ZERO compromise on.

Until we as a country can get to the point when we agree on a set of shared values and most importantly truth compromise will not be possible. The last decade or so the Republican party has adopted a platform of division and obstruction. Their entire goal is to block anything Democrats do and as a result block any social or democratic progress forward. Their goal, is to further the hierarchy where the rich are at the top and the bottom should just deal with it and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The Republican party isn’t really even conservative, they are reactionary - their entire platform doesn’t even consist of any real ideas or policies anymore. Everything they do is us vs them, giving immigrants citizenship? They’re taking “our” jobs! They don’t want opportunity to be equal.

In order to proceed forward in pursuit of the more perfect union our founders envisioned our citizenry must have equal rights and without this, we exclude our fellow citizens. This most certainly isn’t an all inclusive list but some of the ones I feel are most important.