Representative Kevin McCarthy finally won election as Speaker for the US House of Representatives. But not until the 15th round of voting… and a series of backroom deals that reduced the power and autonomy of the Speaker. We would have to go back 100 years to find a similar instance of party disunity.
And not before NC Rep. Richard Hudson had to restrain Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama from physically assaulting controversial Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mike-rogers-lunges-matt-gaetz-house-speaker-voting-members-forced-intervene-video). All three are conservative Republicans. But Gaetz was one of the 20 Representatives in the “Never Kevin” group, described as “terrorists” by conservative Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R). Gaetz, who had also been under investigation for sex trafficking, believes McCarthy has not sufficiently defended him (https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sex-trafficking-row ).
Trump supported McCarthy, who went to Mar-a-Lago to “kiss the ring,” cozying up to Trump after the 1-6-21 insurrection that he provoked. Many observers believe that Trump has caused the demise of the GOP. Trump clearly has enabled their deterioration, especially regarding evangelicals, as conservative evangelical Ben Howe proves in his book “The Immoral Majority.”
But it’s not only Trump. Over the last several decades, the Republican Party has gone from a party that supported civil rights and social security to the party that wants government out of the way so that corporate America and the wealthy can rule.
In 1935, only 15% of Republican House members voted against the creation of Social Security; only 20% of GOP Senators did. An astounding 80% of House Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act, versus only 60% of Democrats. The Senate was the same story with 82% of GOP Senators in support versus a little over 2/3rds of Democrats. The GOP showed similar support for the Voting Rights Act (82% in the House and 94% in the Senate).
However, the current GOP has actively engaged in voter suppression. In 2013, a Supreme Court dominated by anti-government GOP appointees gutted the Voting Rights Act.
In 1965, 50% of GOP House members voted to create Medicare, as did 41% of Republican Senators. Senator Jacob Javits (R-NY) later introduced legislation to expand it to all ages. Now, no Republican leader advocates its expansion, even for those 55-64.
A Pew survey (2-19) shows that under Trump only 54% of Republicans believed that the deficit was a major problem, down from 82% in the Obama years. Meanwhile, under Trump the annual deficit grew every year, going from $438 billion to $3.1 trillion in 2019.
So, how did this change in the GOP come about? The rightward turn of the GOP was due to a draconian racist Nixonian tactic known as the “Southern Strategy.” Per Nixon’s advisor Lee Atwater: “By 1968 you can’t say “n****r” — that hurts you. Backfires. So, you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff … you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
To start his 1980 campaign, Reagan gave a speech near Philadelphia, MS where three civil rights workers had been murdered just 16 years before. Reagan stated: “I believe in states’ rights,” letting right-wingers know that he was on their side.
Similarly, Trump let the Charlottesville white supremacists know his sympathies: “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” Trump has a long history of documented racism.
The GOP had a long-held belief in limited government and the balance of powers. Mitch McConnell stated about Obama’s immigration executive orders: “(Obama) knows that it will make an already-broken system even more broken … this is not how democracy is supposed to work.”
But McConnell knows there is no longer a pro-democracy Republican Party. The ReTrumpican Party will blindly follow this ex-president down the road to unconstitutional authoritarianism, as shown by the GOP reticence to criticize Trump’s role in the 1-6-21 insurrection and remove him from office.
Barbara Bush stated that she no longer considered herself a Republican. Although I’m former Chair of a rural Georgia county Republican party, I’m now an active Democrat. And McCarthy’s latest cave-in to the radical right simply reinforces my decision.
Jack Bernard is the former Director of Health Planning for Georgia. He has served 4 terms on two Georgia Boards of Health.
