As we wait to hear the January 6th Committee lay out their case for how Trump tried to negate Biden's election victory, we are also remembering the Watergate Committee's 50th anniversary this week. Is it a coincidence that both these occurrences involved Republican presidents? Could these events have happened with Democrat administrations? Why did the Republicans of the 1970s recognize that what Nixon did was so wrong that he couldn't continue being the leader of the Republican Party? Why has that changed to the 2020s when Trump can continue to be the dominant force in Republican politics? Do the Republicans today have less adherence to our democratic ideals than the Democrats? Why do many Republicans like to talk about our Country not being a democracy but a Republic as if a Republic didn't have democratic qualities? Hasn't the Republican Party begun to resemble an authoritarian party where you can only accept the results of an election if you win?
The signs of the Republican Party having authoritarian qualities have been apparent for many years. The change can be traced back to the time in the 1970s when the authoritarian segregationist southerners switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party. Nixon's "Southern Strategy" pushed out the liberal members of the Republican Party and started the trend of each party being more one-dimensional in their political ideology that we see today. The Republican Party has been more blatant in its belief that the means justify the ends. Their use of the filibuster and their unwillingness to correct the undemocratic aspects of the Electoral College are just 2 of their undemocratic positions. Nothing more authoritarian recently is shown than McConnell's refusal to give Obama a chance to appoint a Supreme Court judge using a flimsy excuse of the electoral having a say in who could make the selection and then ignoring it when Trump was up for re-election. Do you really think the Democrats would have tried to pull that off?
All of this gets us back to January 6th. Can you imagine the Democrats in Congress supporting an attempt by a Democrat president to do what Trump did on January 6, 2021? While you can find times when the Democrats use their leverage to accomplish their political goals, they still seem unwilling to violate the democratic norms that have governed our Country in our history. One example of this is with the Supreme Court. As much as they feel that the Republicans have used unfair tactics to control the Court the Democrats would have a hard time getting enough support to expand the Court to correct the imbalance that presently exists. They also can't get enough support to modify the filibuster rule because they still have some conservative members.
The future of politics in the US right now is uncertain with one of our political parties being so untied to the democratic norms that have defined our politics of the past. The Liz Chaneys of the Republican Party are being eliminated because they don't adhere to the authoritarian tendencies of a political party ruled by an authoritarian leader. They haven't gotten to the place that Putin has by poisoning his opposition but the new revelation that Trump was "OK" with the mob hanging Vice President Pense gets a little too close to that level of authoritarianism.
P.S.
Even though it might now be seen as a sign of Republican authoritarianism the way the two political parties handle incidents of sexual misconduct is another sign of how the Republican party has lost its moral compass that you would expect from a political party in a democratic country. The tolerance that the Republicans have had for their official sexual misconduct reflects their transformation into an authoritarian party that places adherence to their party above moral misconduct.
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