Today's GOP: Where Democracy Goes to Die

It’s been weird, disturbing and at times even oddly comforting (somewhat) to see Republicans release the kraken after the Mid-terms when they did far worse than they were expecting and even lost a seat in the Senate, as well as lost several full state legislatures and governorships.  Because they did gain control of the House (by just a razor-thin margin after expecting to have as much as a 60-seat majority) and considered this to be a “mandate,” or perhaps out of concern that they didn’t do well which – in their now-crazed minds – meant they had to ratchet things up several notches, or maybe for whatever God-knows-why reasons, Republicans seem to have ignored the lessons of the 2022 Mid-term elections.  But then perhaps that should be expected because it’s the same party that has ignored that they lost the 2020 presidential election and insist they didn’t.

You’d think that getting beaten back hard because of outrage over the Supreme Court ruling against Roe v. Woe would have been a major hint, above all the other hints, like having the GOP’s most extreme full-fascist candidates lose, but no, Republicans have seemingly doubled down on everything.

Republicans ignoring the results is the weird part.  What they’ve been doing in the House and in the most Red states is the disturbing part.  And thinking that doing it again (and then going even more extreme) will make voters suddenly support in 2024 what they rejected in 2022 is the oddly comforting part.  Somewhat.

To be clear, what Republicans are doing is very concerning for what it means to the country, and no election is certain, especially this far out.  So, all other things being equaled, I'd prefer the GOP not going full-fascist.  But looking at how much Republican fascism and anti-abortion were rejected in the Mid-terms compared to the lofty heights they were expecting, I’d be even more concerned about 2024 if I was a Republican.

We’ve seen a lot of the new laws that the deepest Red states have been passing and proposing.  I won’t go over all those, but three new one came to attention last week, and I thought it was worth addressing them.

The first was that as Atlanta D.A. Fani Willis nears announcing indictments in her investigation of Trump voter fraud, Georgia legislators are considering bills to make it easier to remove prosecutors, including dropping required petition signatures from 30% to...2%!! 

[UPDATE:  I wrote this yesterday afternoon.  In the evening, Rachel Maddow reported that the Georgia Senate has already passed the bill, the Georgia House is about to vote on it, and the Georgia governor has said he’ll sign the bill.]

Those behind the bill say it has nothing to do with D.A. Willis, but another prosecutor a few years back who was so out-of-control that he ended up in prison.  Now, for starters, one would think that “ending up in prison” was a pretty effective way of showing the system has a pretty good control already built in.  But beyond that, insisting that there was nothing about this related to the Willis investigation of Trump, and it’s all just One Big Coinkydink is asking the public to ignore the concept of believability.  Somewhat like the Wizard of Oz asking Dorothy and friends to ignore the man behind the curtain they're all staring at.

A second issue takes us over to Florida – of course.  And that’s where legislators have proposed a range of new laws that would change schooling not only from Kindergarten through high school but also higher education.  While this, being Florida under the thumb of DeSantis fascism, is not surprising for Florida, one of the changes leaped out to me.  And that was requiring that teachers must use pronouns that match the students’ gender at birth.

Cool, requiring what words must be used.  Because, sure, that fits right in with the concept of free speech that Republicans like to ride on these days so that they can be as vehemently racist and anti-Semitic as their little hears desire!   But force teachers how to speak, down to the choice of what pronoun you can use.  This from the party of (supposedly) keeping government out of our lives!!!  Just imagine the uproar if Democrats ever tried to cram down throats what words you were allowed to use.   (And the uproar would be deserved.)   But then, this goes hand-in-glove with Arkansas's edict to eliminate the word "LatinX" from official documents.  But this is today’s GOP:  Passing actual laws telling you what words to say.

And okay, Alex, let’s stick with Florida for $100.  It’s just a minefield of fascist disaster.  Last month, for instance, a state House committee approved major changes to Florida’s litigation process.  And fresh off the fumes of that, Speaker Paul Renner figured he was on a high and could do even better.  So, he put together a group of major business and insurance representatives and recently announced that they wanted to make it harder to sue insurance companies.  What Renner and Republicans (and insurance industry) is trying to convince Florida residents is that this would reduce frivolous lawsuits (not to mention legitimate ones), which in turn – somehow – would protect the public.

Because, sure, making it difficult to sue insurance companies is always a good thing for the general public, and what people are clamoring for when it comes to their protection.

And that’s the latest installment of Today’s GOP:  Making Democracy More Fascist for  Your Own Good.  Word by Word.