In his Sept. 23 commentary, Chronicle publisher and owner Chad Taylor asks "when did disagreeing with someone on a public issue then require us to hate the other person? When did we learn disrespect, not ideas, become a debate tactic?" Maybe he could ask Democratic former 3rd District congressman Brian Baird who was on the receiving end of many unhinged Republican attacks.
Taylor says Republicans disagree with each other only 10% of the time. Former aide to Republican Sen. John McCain and former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt would argue it is far greater than 10% of the time and the disagreements are fundamental. Schmidt states that the Republican Party is "no longer faithful to American democracy. "
Donald Trump's GOP, and it is his party, is a party of extremists and extremism. They represent the principles of racism and autocracy and the majority of Americans continue to reject their views. Of course in Taylor's view and in the view of other extremists the only "real Americans" are those found in Lewis County who share the views of the extreme right wing. Everyone else is a pretender. The Constitution, however, begs to differ.
As long as the leader of the GOP is someone who dog whistles white supremacist and militia groups with words like "stand back and stand by," they will continue to lose elections. Such groups welcomed his call to action and responded on Jan. 6. We have knowledge that hate groups are ready to act. The large white supremacist rally in Charlottsille, Virginia, in 2017 showed that. Recent race-based mass murders in Charleston, South Carolina, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, El Paso, Texas, etc., and a dramatic increase in race-based hate crimes reveal these groups are ready for action.
A Republican party that denies human caused climate change, denies racism exists in America today, denies historic racism, works hard to preserve the privileges and vast wealth of a few by perennially cutting their taxes and shifting the burden to working families, that defends a farcical minimum wage that a dog could not live on and then whines about a vast sea of homeless people, or that denies a pandemic exists and works to destroy sound public health measures to deal with it should lose every time.
The popular vote for president is the only real national referendum on the overall approval by Americans of political parties. Since 1992, Republicans have won the popular vote one out of eight times (2004, Bush vs. Kerry).
The Republican strategy going forward is well articulated by its leader, former president Trump. Any election a Democrat wins has to have been rigged. Such claims have arisen in this month's California recall and in our state's 2020 gubernatorial race between Jay Inslee and Loren Culp. Culp and Republicans' claim there was "voter fraud" in 2020 was soundly rejected by Washington's Republican Secretary of State Kim Wyman. Though he lost by 545,177 votes, Culp and Republicans continue to imply there were shenanigans in the vote tally.
This is Steve Schmidt's point. No 9/11 attack, nor a Pearl Harbor surprise attack is as lethal to American democracy as the Republican party's incessant attacks against the integrity and honesty of election officials and workers and the vote tally itself. No, Mr. Taylor, our fight is not in Lewis County or Olympia. This is where our fight is.
Marty Ansley
Cinebar
