The House Speaker imagines a GOP that no longer is.
Five days after the Republican National Committee voted to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kitzinger because, as part of the Select Committee investigating what happened on January 6th 2021, they are “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate public discourse,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi finally weighed in. Maybe she should have just kept her mouth shut.
At her weekly press conference, after remarks touting the latest jobs report, she turned to the RNC resolution. “The Republicans seem to be having a limbo contest with themselves to see how low they can go,” she started. “They seem to have reached rock bottom with their statement.” She added, addressing Republican leaders directly, “Take back your party from this cult — it has been hijacked.” Then she added, “The country needs a strong Republican party, it’s made many great contributions to this country.”
It took five days for Pelosi to say anything, and then this is what she says? Please, Republicans, go back to making “great contributions to this country.” What the hell?
What contributions could Pelosi be thinking of? Completely failing to responsibly manage the coronavirus outbreak, leading to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands? Passing immense tax cuts tilted to the rich? Ramming through Supreme Court justices dedicated to taking away a woman’s right to choose? Separating families at the border? Blocking a pathway to citizenship for millions of immigrants? The misguided and costly invasion of Iraq? Ignoring the AIDS crisis? Decades defending segregation and opposing civil rights?
Maybe Pelosi is thinking of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, and his contributions to the country. Or maybe she imagines that saying nice things about some imaginary time when the GOP wasn’t standing in the way of progress will make it easier for supposedly sane Republican leaders to speak up now. It’s good that former Vice President Mike Pence is now on record saying that he didn’t have the power to undo the 2020 election (though he didn’t make clear what he would have done if he did have that power!), and that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced the RNC resolution and said unequivocally that January 6th was a “violent insurrection.” But they said those things before Pelosi spoke up today.
Pelosi’s remarks are reminiscent of something President Biden said last month at his White House press conference after the failure of the Democrats’ voting rights legislation. “I did not anticipate that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done.”
Pelosi and Biden came of age in the 1950s, when white Americans were enjoying the post-war boom years and both political parties still contained a mix of liberal and reactionary leaders. They entered national politics when political opposites like Republican President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill were also genuine friends. And so, despite all evidence to the contrary, they continue to act like the Republican party of their youth still exists.
Those of us who are a generation or two younger have grown up with a different Republican party, one that first embraced scorched-earth political warfare under Newt Gingrich, and one now that, since Donald Trump, exults in open displays of white nationalist fervor and imposes loyalty tests to its one true leader. When leading organs of that party like the Republican National Committee embrace mob rule, the right response is not to throw them a lifeline, but to stop acting like they are a party worth saving.
Amartya Sen, a Nobel-prize winning economist, once wrote, ‘’No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.” That is because, he argued, they ‘’have to win elections and face public criticism, and have strong incentive to undertake measures to avert famines and other catastrophes.’’ Today in America, with one of our two major political parties deeply in thrall to a man who openly admits his admiration for dictators, the rest of us need to act like the stakes are as real as the danger of future catastrophe.