Tag: GOP no longer supports the Constitution

Republicans are ‘no longer Americans’ because they’ve stopped supporting democracy: Howard Dean

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On Wednesday’s edition of MSNBC’s “The Beat,” former Democratic Party chair Howard Dean outlined the existential threat Republicans pose to American democracy — and suggested that as long as the GOP is on this path, they cannot call themselves American at all.

“I think this is a more serious problem than what’s going on in the Republican Party,” said Dean. “This is a contest to see if our democracy and our country survives. And most Republicans have chosen their power and chosen not to have a democratic country. The lies that have been told, there was a Georgia congressman out there saying there was no insurrection and it was all peaceful and all this stuff. It is not just the lies that Trump won the election. It is the Republican Party that has embraced this lie.”

“I think Liz Cheney deserves a lot of credit,” continued Dean. “I’m sure there will be people that are horrified that I should say that. But what we need is not that we all agree on our vision of America. What we need is honesty and to stand up for core democratic principles. The Republicans have abandoned principles. McConnell has abandoned them. All the backbenchers are carrying on and people from all over the country. The vast majority do not have a spine. If you could find six spines in the Republican Party, I would say you are exaggerating.” Continue reading.

Former Connecticut GOP minority leader slams Republicans for abandoning the ‘constitutional system’

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In Glastonbury, Connecticut near Hartford, Chip Beckett was a fixture in the local Republican Party. But Beckett, a member of the Glastonbury Town Council and its former minority leader, is now an ex-Republican — and he discussed his reasons for leaving the GOP and joining the Independent Party during an interview with the Hartford Courant.

Beckett’s big problem with the national GOP of 2021 can be summed up in one word: Trumpism. Beckett told the Courant that while he thinks Republicans are doing some good work locally in his area, he believes the national GOP has been overtaken by extremists.

Arguing that the national GOP has been “going in the wrong direction for a long time,” Beckett noted that he switched to the Independent Party in December in response to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filing a frivolous lawsuit to delay now-President Joe Biden’s Electoral College certification in four states. Beckett was also disillusioned with his former party because of former President Donald Trump’s policy of separating families at the U.S./Mexico border. Continue reading.

An ugly picture is coming into focus as the state-level GOP attempt to strangle dissent

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As we passed the one-year mark of the pandemic lockdown, the media was flooded with assorted lookbacks, memorials for the dead and even quizzes designed to remind people of what the country and the world were like before the coronavirus descended.

One suggested that you look at the photos stored in your mobile phone and find the last picture taken before everything went to hell. For me, it was a shot of some anemone blossoms near the Georgia shore, that last trip before travel became untenable. (And the first photo after the lockdown began also was floral—the Callery pear trees that blossom every spring in my neighborhood, regardless of plague or politics.)

Looking through my 2020 photos, I noticed something else. Seventh Avenue, the street that runs below my downtown Manhattan apartment, is a frequent thoroughfare for demonstrations (and during the pandemic, platoons of motorcycles, ATV’s and the other day, a gaggle of black-outfitted ninja wannabes on electric skateboards. I am not making this up.). Continue reading.