The Republican Party earned its recognition as the Grand Old Party by saving our country. It can do it again in the upcoming primaries by electing Republicans not beholden to Donald Trump — Republicans with the policies that worked for America.
Republicans safeguarded the continued existence of the United States before during and after the Civil War. It’s Congressional majority passed the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, and it strengthened post-civil war America by promoting industrial expansion and free labor. Those policies together with Republican President Abraham Lincoln’s leadership pulled America through a crisis that threatened its survival.
We’re in a different crisis now and need those kinds of Republicans, even if it takes impeachment; although there are less extreme measures.
All Presidents sought Congressional Declarations of war or Authorizations for Use of Military Force before they attacked another country. Trump did neither.
Nor did he let Congress know what he was about to do. In fact, it wasn’t Trump, it was Benjaman Netanyahu who decided we should bomb Iran. Trump complied without input from Congress or consulting with or informing our European, Asian and Persian Gulf allies, all of whom spurned Trump’s plea for help in liberating the Strait of Hormuz.
Yet Trump’s obedient Republicans tolerated all of it, including letting a foreign leader launch the Iran war, and Trump’s brazen contempt for the Constitution. Worse, they enabled Trump’s bombing by confirming the most corrupt, sycophantic, dangerous and unqualified cabinet in America’s history.
The key components of every President’s cabinet are expertise, competence, experience, high ethical standards, the ability to challenge the president without repercussions and bipartisanship that’s solved the most contentious issues for more than two centuries but is sorely lacking today. Sadly, sitting Republicans confirmed a cabinet that fails dismally on every count.
Republican President Lincoln’s cabinet was intentionally bipartisan, representing different views on slavery. It helped Lincoln unite a fractured nation, and played key roles in the Union’s Civil War victory and the abolition of slavery.
There’s an enormous amount of damage that needs to be undone and catastrophes that need to be prevented. Non-Trump Republicans need to:
- Restore the FBI unit that tracks threats from Iran and that Kash Patel gutted days before Trump bombed Iran.
- Prevent Trump from sending ground troops to Iran that could require the scale of troops in Vietnam and be to Iran’s advantage. Rugged mountains make up half of Iran. Its urban centers are inland and protected by the mountains and uninhabitable deserts.
- Repeal cuts to Medicare and Medicaid Republicans passed as part of Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax cut that replaced lost revenues with cuts to both safety nets.
- Narrow our shamefully wide wealth spread. Republicans’ $4.5 trillion tax cut will make it wider.
- Revive USAID which Trump shuttered. A year later, more than 762,000 people relying on medical aid died including more than 500,000 children. Other crucial defense and economic benefits are now in jeopardy.
- Restore the guardrails against corruption abolished by Trump . He then built his net worth from $4.3 billion to $7.3 billion, often ignoring bipartisan opposition to his actions.
- Stem the threat to the dollar’s supremacy triggered by fiscal irresponsibility. Large countries have set up trade relationships using other currencies. The dollars share of reserve currencies is at a two-decade low.
- Rebuild America’s ability to prepare for disasters hobbled by Trump that could have saved most – maybe all – of the 120 people killed in Kerr County, Texas.
- Restore budget cuts and reduce hostility towards immigrants that’s sent our best scientists and researchers to China.
- Impeach and replace Trump’s cabinet of the most unqualified dangerous sycophants in the country’s history by not confirming Trump’s picks until he’s gone.
- Restore the two Democrats Trump fired from the NLRB to replace them with sycophants so it could no longer protect workers rights by not confirming his picks for replacements to any agency where Trump intends to replace members with sycophants until he’s gone.
There are less extreme measures than impeachment. But what demands impeachment is an honest look at Trump’s decisions to aggrandize his power and image instead of benefitting Americans, and his immorality and dishonesty.
Consider his latest betrayal. Trump told us he’s bombing Iran to achieve regime change, then switched his reason to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Both were lies. He had already accomplished the latter by his last attack. His real reasons for the bombing and killing thousands were to distract from the Epstein scandal and his punishing economy, for leverage to declare an emergency as an excuse to deploy American troops on U.S. soil, to delay the midterm elections and prove he can do anything he wants.
He also told us he was shocked when Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz – also a lie. Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff warned him that an attack could prompt Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. officials long-believed Iran would deploy mines, drones and missiles to close the world’s most vital shipping lane, and Trump acknowledged the risk.
His press secretary claimed “The Pentagon has been planning for Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz … well before Operation Epic Fury …”
Perhaps the most difficult challenge to a new Congress is to recapture the honor, trust and respect that sitting Republicans allowed Trump to diminish a respected global leader to a nation widely mocked, distrusted, and shunned.
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