The “Grim Reaper of Democracy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said the quiet part out loud this past week: The Republican Party stands for nothing.
It has no policies nor anything to offer the country, other than its accumulation and abuse of power through gerrrymandering districts and voter suppression laws to keep Democratic leaning voters from voting. See, Voting Battles of 2022 Take Shape as G.O.P. Crafts New Election Bills:
A new wave of Republican legislation to reshape the nation’s electoral system is coming in 2022 … motivated in part by a widespread denial of former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat last year [the Big Lie], includes both voting restrictions and measures that could sow public confusion or undermine confidence in fair elections, and will significantly raise the stakes of the 2022 midterms.
[In] many places, Democrats will be largely powerless to push back at the state level, where they remain overmatched in Republican-controlled legislatures. G.O.P. state lawmakers across the country have enacted wide-ranging cutbacks to voting access this year and have used aggressive gerrymandering to lock in the party’s statehouse power for the next decade.
Axios reports, McConnell: No legislative agenda for 2022 midterms:
Mitch McConnell has told colleagues and donors Senate Republicans won’t release a legislative agenda before next year’s midterms, according to people who’ve attended private meetings with the minority leader.
Why it matters: Every midterm cycle, there are Republican donors and operatives who argue the party should release a positive, pro-active governing outline around which candidates can rally. McConnell adamantly rejects this idea, preferring to skewer Democrats for their perceived failures.
On the night of Nov. 16, McConnell met with donors, lobbyists and a group of Republican senators in a private function room upstairs at the Capitol Hill Club.
[A] donor asked a question that could only be answered by McConnell. According to a source in the room, the donor said something to the effect of: We all know what’s wrong with the Democrats, but what are we going to be running on to help us win?
As Arnold Horshack would say, “Oh, Oh, Oh. I got it!” The GQP will be running on the Big Lie and white grievance as the white supremacy party. It’s all about GQP tribalism.
McConnell’s response was something to the effect of, With all respect, that’s not what we’re doing, the source said.
McConnell has long held the view that putting out an agenda ahead of midterm elections is a mistake — at least for Senate Republicans, the sources told Axios.
[D]uring the mid-November dinner, McConnell told the donor it would be the job of the next Republican nominee for president in 2024 to lay out the party’s future agenda.
Unless prosecutors step up their game, the next GQP nominee will be the same as the last, the guy who led a failed coup d’etat and seditious insurrection on January 6. Like I said, the GQP will be running on the Big Lie and white grievance as the white supremacy party. It’s all about GQP tribalism.
Steve Benen adds, McConnell: No interest in crafting an agenda ahead of 2022 midterms:
Ahead of the 1994 midterm elections, House Republicans, led by future Speaker Newt Gingrich, presented voters with the “Contract with America.” For the first time in nearly a half-century, the GOP claimed a House majority soon after.
It wasn’t long before many observers made the case that one development caused the other: Republicans crafted an agenda, voters liked what the GOP was offering, and the party won big at the ballot box. The truth is far more nuanced: Polling at the time suggested most Americans had no idea what Gingrich’s “contract” said, and Republicans likely would’ve done just as well in that election cycle had the legislative blueprint never existed.
But some myths linger anyway, and plenty of political insiders continue to believe that if a congressional minority intends to become a congressional majority, the party better unveil some kind of governing agenda ahead of Election Day.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell clearly disagrees. Axios reported overnight:
Mitch McConnell has told colleagues and donors Senate Republicans won’t release a legislative agenda before next year’s midterms, according to people who’ve attended private meetings with the minority leader…. Every midterm cycle, there are Republican donors and operatives who argue the party should release a positive, proactive governing outline around which candidates can rally. McConnell adamantly rejects this idea, preferring to skewer Democrats for their perceived failures.
As a strategic matter, I’m not convinced McConnell’s wrong. There’s no shortage of examples of Republicans doing just fine in election cycles without anything resembling a policy agenda — see 2010, 2014, and 2016[.]
“The Republican decision [in 2020] to adopt no policy platform whatsoever shines a light on the democratic significance of the exercise — and the alarming vacuity of the Republican Party under President Trump. The Republicans are announcing that they stand for nothing. The party’s only reason for being is to gain and retain power for itself and its comparably unprincipled leader. What kind of future can there be for such a party? And how healthy can the two-party system be if one party has no principles?” Washington Post editorial, The Republican Party announces that it stands for nothing. (August 24, 2020).
Benen continues:
What’s more, as far as McConnell is concerned, with the GOP currently controlling no levers of federal policymaking power, the goal for the 2022 midterm elections should be to create a referendum, not a choice. There are certainly risks associated with such a strategy — by next fall, if things are going well in the United States, voters may not feel the need for a dramatic change — but the Senate Republican leader’s tactical approach is hardly absurd.
Hence, McConnell’s policy of “total obstruction” and political sabotage of the Biden agenda, with no regard for the harm caused to the American people. Americans have frequently demonstrated “Stockholm syndrome,” when abused or hostage victims develop positive feelings towards their abuser or captor, by returning Republicans to power after al the harm they have done.
But stepping back, there’s a larger significance to this.
First, even if McConnell and his team came to the opposite conclusion about 2022, there’s no escaping the fact that the Republican Party couldn’t present a policy blueprint because it’s a post-policy party that has no governing agenda. A modern-day sequel to the “Contract with America” would effectively be blank for the far-right party.
Note, as recently as last year, the Republican Party didn’t bother to create a national platform for the first time since 1854. The idea that GOP officials would unveil a blueprint two years later, after expressing effectively no interest in governing, is folly.
And second, if Republicans bundled together some of their vague policy preferences into some kind of 2022 agenda, it’d be filled with unpopular ideas that Democrats would gladly use against them. After all, what do contemporary GOP officials want? Tax breaks for the wealthy, weaker social-insurance programs that families depend on, weaker gun laws, and a systemic effort to roll back the clock on reproductive rights, voting rights, civil rights, and environmental protections.
And Republicans are the pro-Covid, anti-science, anti-vaxxer apocalyptic Trump Death Cult that wants people to die from Covid, with almost 800,000 Americans dead by the end of this year, due to their ignorance and sabotage of pubic health efforts to fight the disease. Such criminal negligence should not be rewarded.
And never forget, never forgive the 147 Republican lawmakers who still objected to the election results even after the Capitol attack on January 6, a failed coup d’etat by MAGA/QAnon domestic terrorists incited by Donald Trump. They are all accessories-after-the-fact to the worst crime in American history, and for some of them who participated in the planning, co-conspirators in a seditious conspiracy. They all should be prosecuted, not reelected to office.
It’s a tough sell for a party that wants to win.