Jamelle Bouie reviews the disastrous failure of the Texas power system and Governor Abbott’s dodge of responsibility by lashing out at the Green New Deal:
Faced with one of the worst crises in the recent history of the state, Republicans have turned their attention away from conditions on the ground and toward the objects of their ideological ire. The issue isn’t energy policy; it is liberals and environmentalists, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a New York congresswoman who was a child when Texas built its first wind farms — and climate activists.
Amid awful suffering and deteriorating conditions, Texas Republicans decided to fight a culture war. In doing so, they are emblematic of the national party, which has abandoned even the pretense of governance in favor of the celebration of endless grievance.
Bouie suggests that, “this is just what it means to be a Republican politician now. Accountability is out, distraction is in. You don’t deal with problems, you make them fodder for zero-sum partisan conflict.”
This pattern is deeply entrenched in the Republican Party. Eight and a half months into Donald Trump’s first year, Jonathan Bernstein, observing a dysfunctional GOP, base voters in revolt, and the disarray of the party’s legislative agenda, placed the blame squarely on the party, not the president.
The hallmark of all this dysfunction is a political party that is rarely interested in, and increasingly unable, to articulate and enact public policy — a post-policy Republican Party.
Reflecting on “the nihilist message of unfocused resentment,” Bernstein saw the pattern in the Tea Party protests beginning in 2009, and earlier as Newt Gingrich and conservative media (“most notably Rush Limbaugh”) became nationally prominent, but he noted that it “dates back to at least Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.”
Governing is hard. Republicans ran on Repeal and Replace for four election cycles: 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016. It was effective as a political strategy, but when push came to shove in 2017 (after winning the White House with control of both chambers of Congress), the party had no plan to replace ACA with and the push to repeal failed.
By 2020, the GOP – by now more of a personality cult, than a group committed to conservatism – did not even adopt a party platform, though it approved a resolution affirming, “The RNC, had the Platform Committee been able to convene in 2020,would have undoubtedly unanimously agreed to reassert the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration.”
In a January 2016 broadcast, Rush Limbaugh talked about Trump’s campaign, his support from the GOP base, and the disconnect with “the so-called conservative movement.”
I think the best way to explain it is that there are a lot of people in this country who are conservative. . . . But that’s not the glue that unites them all. If it were, if conservatism — this is the big shock — if conservatism were the glue, the belief and understanding of deep but commonly understood conservative principles, if that’s what defined people as conservative and was the glue that made the conservative movement a big movement, then Trump would have no chance.
He literally would have no chance. Because, whatever he is he’s not and never has been known as a doctrinaire conservative. . . .
The thing that’s in front of everybody’s face and it’s apparently so hard to believe, it’s this united, virulent opposition to the left and the Democrat Party and Barack Obama. And I, for the life of me, don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that.
Resentment. Grievance. Culture war. Opposing Americans on the other side of the political spectrum. Even when that’s a winning campaign strategy, it’s not a recipe for governing or making policy or resolving practical problems that Americans experience. Or even keeping the power on, so folks can warm their homes and access potable water from the tap.