George Packer had an important piece at The Atlantic last week. The Corruption of the Republican Party (snippet):
Why has the Republican Party become so thoroughly corrupt? The reason is historical—it goes back many decades—and, in a way, philosophical. The party is best understood as an insurgency that carried the seeds of its own corruption from the start.
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The corruption I mean has less to do with individual perfidy than institutional depravity. It isn’t an occasional failure to uphold norms, but a consistent repudiation of them. It isn’t about dirty money so much as the pursuit and abuse of power—power as an end in itself, justifying almost any means.
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The fact that no plausible election outcome can check the abuse of power is what makes political corruption so dangerous. It strikes at the heart of democracy. It destroys the compact between the people and the government. In rendering voters voiceless, it pushes everyone closer to the use of undemocratic means.
And so it has come to pass that Governor Doug Ducey, the ice cream man hired by Koch industries to run their Southwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Arizona, bowed to the demands of the contemptible Septuagenarian Ninja Turtle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and purposefully disregarded the will of Arizona voters in a democratically held election in November by appointing the election loser, Rep. Martha McSally, to John McCain’s vacated Senate seat as a consolation prize.
Why do we even bother holding elections if our authoritarian GOP masters feel free to do whatever the hell they want to do without any regard for the will of the voters they pretend to represent?
