How Obama Destroyed the GOP

The Republican Party is at war with itself. Thirty-five percent of the party faithful is enamored with Donald Trump, the bigoted, xenophobic, vulgar, narcissistic, ignorant, billionaire racist from New York. The other seventy-five percent of the faithful can’t agree on who to support for President instead. The conventional wisdom at this point, is that Trump will win the Republican nomination for President, or all hell will break loose at the Republican Convention in Cleveland this Summer.

 I believe that if Trump gets the nomination, the rest of the Party will form a third party and run someone else for President. I also believe that if there is a brokered convention, and the powers that be somehow manage to give the nomination to someone else, Trump will leave with his middle finger in the air, take his thirty-five percent of old white people, uneducated white people, poorly educated white people, bigots, racists, and Obama haters, and run for President on a third party ticket himself.

Either way, the Republican Party, as we know it today, will cease to exist.

Ironically, that could be a good thing for all of us, Republicans included. Believe it or not, it’s happened before, to the Democrats, for similar reasons.

In 1948, President Harry Truman (a Democrat) ordered an end to discrimination in the military. More than two million Blacks had served in World War II, and Truman decided that they deserved equal pay and the same benefits from the Veteran’s Administration that white veterans were getting. Truman’s executive order, in effect, was the beginning of the modern struggle for civil rights.

Since the end of the Civil War, the former Confederate States had been a literal block vote for the Democratic Party. They were, understandably, totally opposed to the Republicans, the “Party of Lincoln”, the man responsible for freeing their slaves, killing their sons, taking their wealth, and destroying their way of life.

When the Democrats nominated Harry Truman for a second term during their convention, the Southern Democrats were incensed. A few days later they held their own convention in Birmingham, Alabama. Out of that convention the “State’s Rights Democratic Party” was born. They would come to be known as the “Dixiecrats”, and their nominee for President would be the true-blue segregationist from South Carolina, Strom Thurmond. Twenty years later, Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” would use the fierce anger and percolating racism of southern whites resulting from the Civil Rights Movement, and the Democratic President Lyndon Johnson’s support of the movement to completely transform the “Solid South” from a Democratic “block vote” to a Republican one.

So, what does Barack Obama have to do with what’s happening now?

As of today, Donald Trump has won 12 states. Among them are Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky, with Florida, Mississippi, and North Carolina yet to vote (Trump is leading the polls in all of them). The only former Confederate state he did not win is Texas, where Ted Cruz, a Texas Senator, prevailed, and Trump placed second.

Few will admit it, but it is nevertheless true. In all of these states, “Race” trumps everything. The Civil War was never reconciled, and at least thirty-five percent of the population truly believes “The South will Rise Again”.

The election of Barack Obama, a Black man, as President of the United States was unacceptable in the former Confederate States. The Republican Party today “IS” the former Confederate States. They cannot win a national election if they lose any one of them. That is the reason why so many believe the President is not an American, that he is a Muslim, that he is deliberately trying to destroy the American way of life. That is the reason why the Republicans vehemently opposed everything he tried to do, even when he adopted their own ideas. That is why they have disrespected him and the office he holds. They are in agreement with Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who famously ruled that a Black man had “No rights that a white man was bound to respect”.

It is because of Obama that the “tea party patriots” were created. Hatred of Obama fueled the insanity espoused by the National Rifle Association. It is because of Obama that the Republicans were able to dominate off-year elections, promising their followers that they would stop Obama no matter what. They were able to win state legislatures, governorships, the U.S. Senate, and solidified a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. All of them ran against “Obama”. All of them were going to “stop” him. None of them did.

As Donald Trump would say, all the President did was “win, win, win”. He won on healthcare, immigration, Iran, the debt limit, climate change, Cuba, same-sex marriage and deficit reduction. He added 14 million new jobs, with more than 70 consecutive months of job growth, reducing the unemployment rate from over 10% to 4.9%. He saved the automobile industry, rescued the economy, and provided health insurance for 20 million people that would otherwise not have it.

The confederate, uh, Republican faithful are tired of losing, especially to people that are less than them, like Blacks and Latinos, and Muslims, and Syrians. They like Trump because he says what they’re thinking. They don’t like the Republican establishment because they lied to them, tricked them, hoodwinked them. They fell for the Okey Doke. The Republicans said they would put the Black guy in the White House in his place, the faithful gave them their votes, and they didn’t do what they said they would do.

The Confederates were once all in with the Democrats. When the party decided to do the right thing on equality and human rights, they split, and the Republicans welcomed them with open arms. This Summer, they will split again, unfortunately (for them), there will be no future as a majority party available.

As a result, America will be a better place. The body politic will be healthier. The recurring viral infection of racism, bigotry, homophobia, and xenophobia will go into recession. Unfortunately, some day, it will be back. Both parties have been infected by this cancer, who knows which party it will reappear in?

In the meantime, we can thank Barack Obama for destroying the cancer this time.