Category: opinion

In an opinion today from Greg Sargent:

The new platform, which thousands of GOP activists in Texas agreed to at the state party convention over the weekend, is a veritable piñata bursting with far-right extremist fantasies. It states that Texas retains the right to secede from the United States and urges the Texas legislature to reaffirm this.

It describes homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” It flatly declares that no validation of transgender identity is legitimate. It dismisses all gun regulations as a violation of “God given rights,” and sharply rebukes Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) for pursuing a bipartisan gun-safety package that’s extraordinarily modest.

But the document might be most revealing in its treatment of voting and democracy. It declares President Biden was “not legitimately elected” in 2020. It says Biden’s win was tainted by voting in swing-state cities, furthering a GOP trend toward more explicitly declaring votes in urban centers illegitimate.

The Texas GOP is an embarrassment. The GOP everywhere is an embarrassment. None of this is “conservative” – certainly not in the traditional sense of intellectual conservatism in America. All of it is driven by the cult of personality surrounding the former president, and his populist whims. He was willing to upend the American republic without hesitation, to preserve his own power. All of it based on a big lie.

I spent seventeen years of my life working in politics, all of it in support of the Republican Party. In 2020, I had long since had enough and walked away. I still have a lot of friends who work in politics, and who still work for the GOP. I keep wondering when they, too, will have had enough. What is the line that the GOP will cross that will finally be too far for them? At this point, I cannot imagine where that line would be and, worse, what it says about my friends.