Randall Pettigrew, GOP District 51 (Lea County) representative, responded to my blog on Yvette Herrell. He wrote, “lol. I do however agree with the 1st sentence of your last paragraph.” Pettigrew’s comment not only represents himself, but also others old enough to have better manners and more regard for facts and truth. But he finds the data about Herrell’s record and platform from government or campaign sources laughable. No doubt, his GOP constituents also find facts and truth laughable.
Pettigrew’s response reflects the lack of decency and integrity which most GOP politicians, donors, and supporters now demonstrate without shame throughout the country. When today’s Republican politicians were children and adolescents, the GOP talked incessantly, presumably to suggest, in contrast to the Democratic Party, their commitment to family values. Now that these GOP politicians are adults, it is fair to ask about their family values and their families’ values. Did their parents raise them to be disrespectful and dishonest, or did mom and dad just let their kids grow up that way?
Of course, Democratic politicians do not always tell the truth in campaigns, but they, their donors, and supporters still respect facts established by official records, scientific reports, expert testimony, and the like. With few exceptions, such is not the case with Republican politicians. They believe or cynically assert that Trump won an election stolen by Biden. They either affirm that climate change is a hoax or deny that it is man-made. They disregard medical facts contrary to their views about pandemics and abortions. They scorn religious beliefs different from theirs, and the First Amendment, which protects them. Their true faith is in guns and the Second Amendment only.
The difference in the value placed on facts—or, more generally, truth—between the two parties reflects itself in their approaches to legislation. Disregarding facts or truth, Republican enact legislation which is malign in purpose, flawed in conception, coercive in implementation, or harmful in effects. Mindlessness in GOP-dominated legislatures is matched by mindlessness among their ardent followers. No one on the Democratic Left, only those on the Republican Right, dress in military garb; wear Nazi-like paraphernalia or Nordic horned helmets; open-carry military weapons; and threaten ordinary citizens and elected officials in public places and public meetings. Such are the operational styles of the GOP patriotism of self-styled “real Americans.”
Consider the Republican bait-and-switch on abortion legislation. Before conservative Catholic SCOTUS justices who lied about “settled law” in their confirmation hearings ignored stare decisis on the Court, Republicans opposing abortion argued that states should enact legislation appropriate in each. Now, in a callous display of dishonesty, they are quietly pressing for federal legislation. They have good reason to go silent, into hiding, so to speak. For, in the current mid-term campaigns, Republicans, once so proud of their anti-abortion stances, one crueler than the next, are now busy deleting from their websites their attacks on abortion and abortion rights because many people have reacted in anger to the revocation of a Constitutional right. Those doubting that the effects of newly enacted abortion restrictions are cruel, damaging, or deadly should ask why Catholic Republican Texas Governor Abbott Texas refuses to release information on abortion-related damage and deaths before the mid-term elections. He knows that, if the figures were released, the state would turn from red to blue in a fetal heartbeat. First Republican lies, then Republican cover-ups.
Likewise, the dishonest Republican agitation about immigration into border states. The GOP lie is that illegal immigrants are invading border states; its advice: be afraid. The facts are that 2,000,000 refugees have been turned back at the border in Biden’s administration and that 750,000 seeking asylum have legally entered the country and remain in it while they await asylum hearings. They are in states which already have large populations of immigrants: California (125,000), New York (110,000), Florida (98,000), and Texas (75,000), with most of the rest in Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey; five of seven are Democratic states. Two border states, red Arizona and blue New Mexico, have small numbers of illegal immigrants, but most pass through to other states.
Florida demonstrates that the immigration issue is largely political, not critical. No immigrants invade the state from across the Mexican border because it has no border with Mexico; most of its immigrants are Caribbean. Presumed 2024 presidential candidate, GOP Governor DeSantis had to invent an immigration issue by importing legal, not illegal, immigrants to Florida before exporting them to Massachusetts.
The new Republican qualification for office is not necessarily allegiance to Trump’s Big Lie, but necessarily allegiance to lies. The result: a GOP of Gassy and Oily Politicians whose lies may win them elections and, once they are in office, will keep them there. Only when policies based on ideology, ignorance, and indifference to facts and truth do actual damage will people realize their mistake—too late, too bad, tough luck.
For instance, the GOP is divided between those who claim to want to strengthen social security by privatizing it and those who claim to want to sunset or re-authorize it every 5 years. Try planning your retirement under the threat of a declining stock or bond market, or with the periodic uncertainty of the end of social security. The GOP is also divided between those who claim to want to strengthen Medicare by reducing coverage and ending programs, and those who claim to want to sunset or re-authorize it every 5 years. Try to budget medical costs when you face exclusions or loss of coverage and. higher premiums and costs, or, every so often, these and spikes in health-care expenses.
Voters for Republicans and their gassy lies and oily promises will learn that they have been conned and can do nothing about it. They will realize that the reforms based on—you guessed it—lies to prevent (the non-existent problem of) voter fraud restrict their voting. They will realize that the GOP has exploited not only gas and oil, but also their juvenile fears of people said to have absolutely terrifying attributes—skin color; turbans and robes; strange foods; different religions or national origins; changed genders or alternative sexual orientations—who, nevertheless, somehow, never affect them at all. Yet they will continue to fear monsters under their beds who intend to devour them, feet-first, in the middle of the night. Thank the Gas and Oil Party for your nightmares.
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