What a difference 40 years makes.
In the fall of 1980, I was completing the second year of my two-year term as a Republican member of the Maine Legislature. I was still proud to be a member of the GOP and had great respect for many of my fellow legislators.
Fast-forward to 2020 and the era of the Trumplicans.
I just read the words of some of the six Maine Republicans who attended the start of the four-day event that will pretend to be a national convention of the Grand Old Party. In reality, it is explicitly designed to be nothing more than a cult-like worship fest for Donald Trump, who would be proclaimed as America’s king if his supporters thought they could get away with it.
“This convention is my third and it’s an honor to be here,” Josh Tardy, a Newport attorney and former state legislator himself, told a reporter. “This is a very unifying time for the party.” After listening to Trump serving up one of his lie-filled rants to delegates, Saco dentist and self-described “huge Trumpster” Demi Kouzounas, who heads the Maine Trumplican Party, proclaimed that “he was on fire.” And Dale Crafts, a Lisbon state legislator who is challenging Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, called Trump “one of the strongest leaders I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
Who are these people and in what alternate world do they dwell? One would assume, given their backgrounds, that all of them have had the benefit of some degree of education and that they have at least a modicum of intelligence. And yet, they seem to have fallen victim to the same sort of Trumpism that has infected U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. In 2016, Collins strongly asserted that Trump was wholly unfit for the presidency. In the nearly four ensuing years since he assumed office, Trump has proven that unfitness time and time again. But while Collins has offered a few tepid comments of opposition to certain Trump actions or pronouncements, she has been completely unwilling to mount any sort of head-on challenge or take any leadership in holding him responsible for his disgraceful, possibly outright illegal, conduct in office. It’s time for Collins to go and for Maine Speaker of the House Sara Gideon to take her place in the U.S. Senate.
To hear Tardy, Kouzonunas and Crafts tell it, Trump’s lies, his racist and fascist behavior, his refusal to honor tradition or law, his destruction of U.S. relationships with our global allies, and his complete lack of leadership in times of crisis all are desirable qualifications for another four years in the Oval Office. Clearly, what was once a real Republican Party is no more.
Sadly, here in Maine’s Second Congressional District, where I live, there still are plenty of Trump supporters who take as gospel his every utterance, many of which are directly originated by the cabal of phony journalists who populate Fox News. If Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham whisper something into Trump’s ear, he can’t wait to pass it along in a Tweet to all his MAGA-Hat followers. It doesn’t make any difference to them that his prediction about the coronavirus just disappearing or his claim that mail-in voting will invalidate any election, but especially one that involves him, are entirely untrue. Fox and Trump said it so it must be true. In my world, that’s called ignorance by choice.
It’s all too true that most Americans already have made up their minds how they will vote in this November election. The only hope for the survival of our democracy rests in voter turnout. There’s plenty of evidence that a majority of Americans believe Trump has failed miserably over his nearly four years as president. But Trump and his Trumplican supporters are going to do everything they can to suppress the votes of that majority. In a political campaign, there are all sorts of good reasons why a voter may choose to support one candidate over another. But never, for more than a century, has the very real question of whether our democratic form of government will survive come before American voters…until now.
If we here in Maine don’t turn out in support of Joe Biden — whether we think he’s not progressive enough, or too liberal, or too old — we run the risk of allowing the rabid cadre of MAGA-Hats to put a would-be fascist and racist dictator back in a position of responsibility he’s simply incapable of assuming. And if we don’t help Sara Gideon in her bid to shift control of the Senate from Trumplican to Democrat, we will face another four years of congressional inaction and paralysis at a time when our country desperately needs to move forward.
It’s really that simple…and that important.
Photo: Stephen Maturen, Getty Images
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August 29, 2020 at 12:10PM
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Democracy is on the ballot — it's really that simple - mainebeacon.com
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