The GOP Has Morphed Into The Party Of Bigotry And Hate

A few days ago, the House of Representatives voted to censure Paul Gosar (and remove him from his committee assignments for publishing a cartoon in which he killed a fellow representative (a woman of color). His Republican cohorts in the House voted overwhelmingly against censuring him. Threatening a fellow member is OK with them -- as long as it's a woman, a minority, and a Democrat.

And Gosar is not the only member to commit hateful acts. Recently, Lauren Robert joked to an audience about Democrat Ilhan Omar being a terrorist. Will congressional Republicans take her to task for her reprehensible statement? Not likely. There has been silence so far from Republican leaders and members of Congress. The GOP has, in essence, become the party of racism, bigotry, and hate. And they will continue that, because it is what a significant majority of their base wants of them.

How did the Republican Party get itself in such a mess? It started in the mid to late 1960's, when President Johnson, a Democrat, got three civil rights bills through Congress and signed them into law. This angered millions of racists, especially in the South, and they abandoned the Democratic Party in droves. The Republicans happily accepted these racists, because it made them the majority party in almost every Southern state.

They were joined by white evangelicals, who opposed equal rights for women and the LGBT community. And Republicans roped in many white workers by making them fear immigrants.

The Republican leaders thought they would be able to control this union of haters -- appealing to them at election time to win, and then go back to their regular brand of conservatism. They were wrong.

With the election Of President Obama, America's first black president, the haters began to coalesce under the banner of the Tea Party. And in just a few years, they had seized control of the Republican Party. Now they make up a majority of the party, and demand that their leaders reflect their lack of values. And those leaders now do that -- afraid they will be primaries or just kicked out of the party.

It has become so bad that there are virtually no moderates left in the party -- and the conservatives must go along with cultural hatreds of the base or be branded as RINO's (Republican In Name Only) and driven from the party.

This is sad, because the country needs at least two powerful parties to provide balance and make sure neither the right or the left goes too far. But with the right abandoning their principles and catering to the hate and bigotry, that balance is thrown off. They no longer can negotiate with Democrats for the good of the country, and will vote against any measure that Democrats propose or which disagrees even slightly with their hate.

This is beyond sad, because it also poses a danger to our democracy as the haters support autocracy more and more -- and it poses a danger to American lives as they have started to believe in violence to achieve their goal of domination.

There is only one way out of this mess the GOP has created. They must be voted out of power so completely that they reorganize with decent values (or cease to exist, and are replaced with a decent version of conservatism).