Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

The Man Who Broke America

 Kids today won't believe it, but it didn't all start with Trump. No, Newt Gingrich bears a sizable portion of the blame for the descent of the GOP from a pro-business, hate-the-poor party into a raving pack of culture war lunatics, neo-Birchers and hysterics. Gingrich was the pioneer of marrying vitriolic assaults on his enemies as threats to America in order to win tax cuts for millionaires. He was one of the first of the old Republican elite to endorse Trump in 2016, because he recognized how Trump was a natural extension of the bilious politics that he had initiated in the 1990s.

Mitch McConnell gets a lot of blame, because he's on the stage currently. However, McConnell is not a naked authoritarian. He's a guy who realizes that he can stymie progress with a minority of the Senate elected by a minority of the public. He's cynical and a hypocrite. Gingrich was the one who created the benchmarks of Trumpist politics.

The fires of hell can't burn hot enough for that guy.

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