There is coldness at the heart of the modern GOP.
It’s dispassion that proposes eliminating fuel assistance, and sending poor people food in a box.
It’s an amorality that gives a massive tax cut to the rich and then blames the resulting deficit on spending that benefits the elderly and the poor.
It’s cynicism that pits young dreamers against children’s health insurance.
It’s a coldness that countenances children shot to death in their schools, LGBTQ people slain as they dance at a club, music lovers mowed down as they listen to their favorite singer, congregants killed as they worship in their pews, and black lives cut short by law enforcement on the streets of their neighborhoods.
I have tried to reconcile this coldness with any kind of coherent governing philosophy that aligns with our founding principles. The Constitution begins with “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense, and ensure domestic tranquility — who could argue with that? While every generation has a discussion about what these phrases mean, our nation’s shared endeavors have generally led to expanded opportunity, broadly shared prosperity and increased rights. But not now.
The old Republican Party hated debt. At least, that’s what its members said. But, St. Ronald Reagan increased the debt by 182 percent. Bush father and son raised it by 54 percent and 101 percent, respectively. Presidents Clinton and Obama certainly raised the debt too, but they didn’t claim to be budget-cutters. FDR was the debt winner, increasing it to get us out of the Great Depression and to fund World War II.
This president and the Republican-controlled Congress are on track to increase the debt by the second highest amount in history. It’s not for any noble cause — they bestowed massive tax cuts on their donors (and very little for you and me).
Now they are deficit hawks, proposing a budget that eliminates funding that is literally a lifeline to millions of people in our country. Fuel Assistance, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, housing assistance, food pantries, Medicaid, Community Services and Community Development Block Grants all are drastically cut or eliminated in this budget.
Are these real proposals? Or are they a distraction so that they can gut Social Security, Medicare and finish demolishing Medicaid. Whatever their plan, they clearly don’t care about the common welfare. They just need to reduce spending so that the tax-created deficit hole is smaller, not to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
In 1864, the Republican Party platform stated, “Foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development of resources and increase of power to the nation, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encouraged by a liberal and just policy.”
In 1960, the GOP platform said, “Immigration has been reduced to the point where it does not provide the stimulus to growth that it should, nor are we fulfilling our obligation as a haven for the oppressed. Republican conscience and Republican policy require that the annual number of immigrants we accept be at least doubled.”
Today, despite the enormous support for the “Dreamers” and the lukewarm support for a wall, the GOP has tied these issues together. Our population is aging and our workforce is in decline; without immigrants, jobs will go unfilled. Both Lincoln and Nixon understood that immigration is essential to “promote the general welfare.”
Republicans have made a deal with the devil, in the guise of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA. The top 10 recipients of NRA funding in the Senate received $42,822,986 over the course of their careers, and the top 10 in the House received $4,333,003. The current president benefited from the NRA’s $30 million spent in support of his run for the White House.
That money has bought the NRA exactly what it wanted — a complicit Congress and White House that blocks any true regulations on deadly firearms. How do they justify this? How does a nation awash in military-style guns expect to have any sort of “domestic tranquility”?
I can’t understand why the national Republican Party has become the mouthpiece for the NRA, the vehicle for nativist, racist fear-mongering, and the federal safecrackers for the ultra-rich.
The Republicans’ extremist views, fueled by gerrymandering and right-wing money, have made us all a less safe country in a dangerous world. It is not for me to tell the GOP how to find its way again — the Republicans will need to do that on their own.
I know that we all have an obligation to the next generation to fix this country or to get out of the way so that they can.
Clare Higgins, of Northampton, a former mayor of the city, is executive director of the nonprofit Community Action Pioneer Valley. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.