The Republicans have an offer for how to heal the split in American politics: Capitulate
by Tom Toles
Regardless of the particulars of any given policy or appointment, the fact of a severe partisan split within America is still a fact. There are two ways to address this: try to find a way to a middle ground, or use every opportunity to seize additional power and steamroll over what happens to be the majority opinion in the United States.
Remember, please, that Donald Trump received far fewer actual votes than Hillary Clinton. One would assume, on the face of that, that a certain degree of healing politics might be in order. An acknowledgment that the majority of Americans were denied their choice of president, and policies, and that they were due some consideration in how the country was governed. Not because the law demands it but because the spirit of a representative government demands it.
But no. President Trump, at virtually every opportunity, has governed as though he had an overwhelming mandate from the voters to move the country as far to the hard right as is functionally possible. And to obliterate every trace of his duly elected predecessor, and to overrun the norms of governing of all the duly elected predecessors before him. Starting with the Supreme Court. If Merrick Garland had to be bypassed the first time in a raw power play, how healing might it have been if Trump had nominated him this time? But no. Hard right, again.
This level of extreme partisanship, and from a minority position at that, is new. It is maximalist in terms of its provocation and consequences. It is saying to the other half of America, the larger half, that Trump is ruling them out as factor in American governance.
Yes, elections have consequences. And so do governing decisions. Governing from the hard right, on a basis of pure personal loyalty to Donald Trump, within the context of nonstop lies and referring to non-supporters as “the enemy of the American people,” was a choice. The choice Trump and the Republican party is giving the rest of America is: Capitulate, or stop them.
So that is your choice this November. Don’t waste it.
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