Freezing Texans, you know, the ones who are burning their fences to stay warm, aren’t fans of limited government right now. But they were when they voted for Greg Abbot for governor, and Ted Cruz and John Cornyn for Senator.

Every state has to make choices about limited government vs. the welfare state model. Texans chose to go it alone on the power grid and are now paying a price. This is what my father used to call natural consequences. Maybe it wasn’t the right decision, but spending a few nights in the cold might fix that for the next time. All good.

In the midst of the crisis Texans found their senior senator Ted Cruz hopping a flight to Mexico to enjoy some rays while the food lines grew longer and the water shortages persist. As Atlantic write David Graham pointed out, Cruz’s sin was not so much hypocrisy because all politicians can be accused of that in some form, but that he failed to use what power he had to lift a finger for his constituents. Taking a page from the Trump playbook, he bolted for a warmer climate and recreational opportunities for himself.

The thing to watch according to Graham, is whether the response by elected leaders is performative versus useful. Witness last night’s Fox News interview with Gov. Abbott who, try as he might, tried to put the blame on the Green New Deal, which as we all know hasn’t even materialized yet. So far the response has been predictably performative.

As Ed Burmila aptly but it, there are no libertarians on airplanes. Deregulation sounds great until it’s you on the deregulated flight.

This goes against everything I was just reading about the Dalai Lama’s teachings about seeing my neighbor as another human being just like me, but I’m personally hoping for a bloodbath of embarrassing moments at the impeachment trial. Not that I’m an aspiring Buddhist anyway.

The reason goes back to how dangerously close we came to having a fascist regime with a small army of cult followers running the country. Republicans can’t be trusted with supporting free and fair elections so the only short term solution is to make sure there are less of them. They are already cooking up ways to make voting more difficult in 2022 where they are in control in Arizona, Texas, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Taking a page from the Benghazi playbook Democrats should drag culpable republicans through a public spectacle of a senate trial with the goal of pasting as much egg on their faces as possible. That’s exactly what they did to Hillary Clinton with the Benghazi hearings and it was very effective at putting a stain on the Clinton brand.

I have no fantasies that Trump will be convicted and I suspect the impeachment managers know the outcome of the final vote is inevitable. That would depend heavily on 17 senators doing the right thing (they won’t). But that’s not the point this time. This is more like getting sued and opening up the process for discovery. Yes, let’s please do review what just happened publicly.

Tens of thousands of people have left the Republican party since the failed insurrection attempt on Jan. 6th. If Democrats play their cards right they can make the Republican brand so toxic by the end of the senate trial that nobody should want that moniker next to their name. It’ll take years to rub the stink off.

With apologies to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this is how the game is played now, or we risk not having a democracy for much longer. Republicans might go through some things this week, and I’m less interested in seeing the final weigh in of the main ticket and more interested to see how many Congressional Republicans get dragged along for the ride.

The Serenity Prayer often comes to mind in today’s toxic political climate.

God grant me the serenity 

To accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

I can be up in arms about Trump and Republicans all day long but have little power to change it. At the state level Republicans were clear enablers of the Trump agenda and there’s little I can do about that either, except vote every couple of years.

What I do have control over though is my relationship with you. At any time I get to decide if you’re out. I don’t do this lightly or without some level of thoughtfulness. I’ve got friends who voted for Trump in 2016 based on the canard that Republicans are better for the economy. I’m happy to debate this issue all day long, but if that was your reason and you voted for Trump once because of that, I can forgive you. While I thought there was plenty of evidence that the Trump administration would be a disaster to climate, public health, racism, and yes, the economy, I don’t expect everyone to see it my way. That’s why I’ve been debating Republican friends over policy for 35 years.

However, if you witnessed the spectacle of the past four years and still said yeah, he’s my guy, you’re out. Nobody should have an excuse to be that blind, I’m very sorry.

As I read various publications about the decline of the Republican party, two things become apparent. One is, changing demographics do not favor Republicans. The other is, not all Republicans are dumb.

According to Emma Green, a writer for the Atlantic, about a third of Millennial voters identify or lean republican. Among Millennials, more people are non-religious than part of any faith group including evangelicals. Clearly republicans haven’t done anything of late to attract the youth vote. The ones I talk to are hostile towards boomers for bankrupting the treasury.

This math however, should give democrats little if any comfort. Why? Because republicans cheat. Redistricting is already underway at state houses across the land. Republicans in Arizona are hard at work trying to cancel vote by mail. If you don’t have the numbers then I guess you have to devise ways to come out ahead.

2022 is shaping up to be a race between Democrats trying to take advantage of demographics in their favor vs. Republicans devising new ways to suppress the vote. It’s hard to say how it will turn out but the race is on.

It’s always fun reading American History and being in awe of the patriots who led the charge like George Washington and John Adams. In David McCoullagh’s biography of John Adams I was struck by the level of personal sacrifice involved by the leaders of the revolution. General Washington spent months out in the freezing cold chasing down his own soldiers from deserting. John Adams spent months on ships at sea traveling to Europe where heaving several times a day was expected behavior and the probability of reaching your arrival was around 70% – or in other words, a 30% chance the ship doesn’t make it.

This brings me to the protagonists of Jan. 6th. Leaders of the “Save America / Save the Steal” movement. They exhibited so much courage they had their limos deliver them to the site where they gave speeches that riled the crowd up about the need for a ‘revolution.’

Lin Wood

“TIME TO START KICKING ASS”

Rudy Giuliani

“TRIAL BY COMBAT”

Donald Trump

“SOMETHING’S WRONG HERE. SOMETHING’S REALLY WRONG. CAN’T HAVE HAPPENED.” AND WE FIGHT. WE FIGHT LIKE HELL AND IF YOU DON’T FIGHT LIKE HELL, YOU’RE NOT GOING TO HAVE A COUNTRY ANYMORE.”

Unlike Washington and Adams however there was no personal sacrifice involved. Following the speaches, after promising to join the revelers, they promptly got back in their limousines and went to their favorite TV viewing rooms.

The Leaders of the Movement making a b-line for their TVs

What has the GOP acting all wonky about Georgia? This.

Remember when Jimmy Carter worked months to get the hostages back from Iran and then Reagan took office for about 3 days and took credit?  

Oh, and remember when Barack Obama inherited the Bush financial crisis of 2008 and worked feverishly to recover it and then Republicans blamed Obama for the trillions in stimulus it took to recover the economy?

Okay now remember when the Trump administration put some time in on Operation Warp Speed to get us a vaccine in for Covid-19 but it wasn’t available until just before the Biden administration was about to take over?

As Joe Biden says “Help is on the way.” Democrats are going to take full credit for the Covid recovery and rightfully so. See Hostages, Carter. 2008 Financial Crisis, Obama. That’s how the game is played, my friends.

I have a hard time putting a lid on my astonishment when I witness Trumpers complaining about the mean tweets of OMB cabinet appointee Neera Tanden. I mean, you’re a Trump supporter. You don’t get to complain about mean tweets for the rest of your life, okay?

I’ve written at length how in religion, most of us have inherited our belief systems as opposed to doing an objective search. The same thing is true for our political party affiliations. Sadly most of us default to whatever our parents were without giving the matter too much thought.

That’s somewhat predictable. Challenging the status quo can be hard. I get it. It can also be painful to have to announce what amounts to the equivalent of a coming out party if you do decide to go against the grain. You risk getting ridiculed by family members and friends. Not an easy choice.

But it’s a necessary choice now. Republicans have gone off the deep end. Since Ronald Reagan, I used to think Republicans had only one devious plan and that was to completely unravel the New Deal. For decades they’ve wanted nothing more than to eliminate social security, medicare and welfare programs of any kind. It’s a move towards pure capitalism where the wealthy get their just rewards and if you weren’t so lucky, then that’s just too bad.

But it’s different now. Not only do Republicans want to cancel the New Deal, they actively support conspiracy theories, are willing to look the other way when our elected leaders taking bribes from foreign countries, gut our justice department of any semblance of independence, support a leader who tries to play both sides on racism, and now seem content with blatant voter suppression – but only in cities with a high percentage of minorities.

But it’s even worse than that. Republicans are suddenly open minded about national security when it comes to first family security clearances and personal e-mails. Such short memories. The latest incomprehensible strategy adopted by the party centers around science denial. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a global pandemic that will likely kill 500,000 people or climate change , Republicans are on the front line of “you know, there are multiple opinions about this.”

During the Reagan/Bush years, it used to be standard policy debate about what blend of capitalism and socialism we wanted to define ourselves as a country. We’ve been a mix of both since FDR introduced social security in 1935. Until now it’s been a debate about how far to take the concept – full blown socialized medicine or reduce or even eliminate social security and medicate because you know, deficits. Those were the good old days.

Alas Trump and MAGA changed everything. Now there are real reasons to go through the pain and challenge the political party you inherited. Our elected leaders are ignoring science and the scientists. Anit-maskers are literally killing people. The pandemic has put the real hurt on small businesses. Many won’t recover. Food insecurity has reached all-time highs since the Great Depression. Some states are over 25% of the population. Meanwhile Amazon is killing it.

Speaking of Amazon, this brings me to the second reason people subscribe to a particular political party. Their beloved 401k. The “Trump helped boost my 401k, therefore I love him” crowd.

This is a special kind of ignorance that doesn’t get corrected until the poor become so poor that they have to step over a dozen people who haven’t had a shower in 6 months on their way to the Symphony downtown. A city with no middle class is no city to be proud of. Homelessness is getting worse, not better under Republicans’ dog eat dog pure capitalism play. If only you weren’t so greedy about your cherished 401k.

Maybe you’re a Republican because of your religious affiliation. That can be somewhat understandable given the pressures of crowd-think. Abortion has been a wedge issue for Republicans since Roe v. Wade. I get it. It seems black and white and simple to choose which side to be on. I can understand the struggle with a moral issue here, I really can. My best effort to convince you to reconsider the Republican party has to do with opening our eyes to all of the moral issues. There just isn’t anything in the Republican party’s platform on economic equality or social justice that remotely resembles the life of Jesus. I’m sorry, but it’s more complicated than one issue.

Leaving the Republican party does not equate to joining the libs. You can become an independent like myself. I grew up in a fiscally liberal but socially conservative family. But to my parents’ credit, that social conservatism was applied to our family and didn’t necessarily ascribe what’s good for us was how it had to be for everyone. I became an independent in the 1990’s during the first Iraq war. I didn’t see the benefits of party affiliation and if anything I felt there might be risk associated with party affiliation (see Saddam Hussein, Baath party members tortured).

If I haven’t convinced you to consider thinking for yourself and not being defined by the party of your parents or your retirement account, then consider one last issue. How does it feel to be a part of the party that bailed out Kyle Rittenhouse? The kid brought a rifle to a rally and opened fire on black people with no other purpose than to please the Proud Boys — also staunch Republican supporters. Perhaps you get tired of people calling Republicans racist, but what other option is there? They are literally packing heat to peaceful rallies and lining up their scopes with people of color. Meanwhile the party of Lincoln sits there and doesn’t denounce anything. I would make the decision to leave for that reason alone. Guilty by association. Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are apparently your new peeps now.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can leave the party and become and independent minded thinker and vote on issues. It affords you the flexibility to be fiscally conservative and socially liberal or the other way around. It’s up to you. But no one should have to be a Republican just because their mom and dad were.

With senate control on the line in Georgia, can you even imagine how much money will flow into those campaigns? I like the fact that Trump won’t be on the ballot which should keep a few of the MAGAs in their caves.