It’s time to stop calling them Republicans.
They do not stand for traditional Republican values of the last 80 years. Ronald Reagan would not qualify as a MAGA mate.
Correction. Actually, the Grand Old Party no longer reflects the even older values of Teddy Roosevelt at the turn of the 20th century, nor the values of Abraham Lincoln during the prior most extreme time of contention among Americans.
So let’s stop the illusion and call their cult allegiance by a new, more accurate party name: The Trumped. Or maybe The Trumpster Party. We’ll call its adherents Trumpists. Or Trumpers. Or Trumpsters.
The Trumped share none of the values and achievements of past Republican presidents—Reagan, Bush I, Eisenhower, Teddy Roosevelt, Lincoln. Even Nixon left a positive policy legacy by creating the EPA, engaging China and the Soviet Union.
I wonder how today’s Trumped U.S. senators sleep at night? Because they surely were sleeping through the nomination hearings. Sleepwalking through their responsibilities as U.S. senators to searchingly evaluate a president’s nominees.
The Constitution empowers the Senate to “advise and consent” on all nominations (plus treaties and declarations of war), but as a New York Times headline recently blared, “G.O.P. Senators Choose Consent.”
“The party-line committee votes to send both nominees to the floor for confirmation next week provided the clearest evidence yet that Mr. Trump’s pressure tactics and the threat of a barrage of abuse by his allies against would-be defectors had sapped whatever remained of a G.O.P. impulse to balk. And they suggested a broader impulse among Republicans on Capitol Hill — even the few who have maintained some degree of independence from Mr. Trump — to shrink from confrontation with him and allow him to have his way at the dawn of his second term,” The Times wrote.
Trumped legislators are remaining silent about the massive butcher knife Elon Musk and his youthful posse are wielding upon workers at departments as diverse as the FBI, USAID, and the CIA.
Perhaps they are keeping quiet because as long as they toe the Trump/Musk line they can feel comfortable they will not be primaried and, perhaps more importantly, they will continue to rake in their annual federal salaries, benefits, pensions, and speaking fees even as thousands of dedicated civil servants lose their paychecks and millions of needy across America and the world lose sustenance and hope that the United States has provided for six decades.
So much for caring about others as long as “I get mine.”
It’s almost impossible to read all the commentary analyzing the impact Trump’s assault on federal programs will have on ordinary Americans, in blue states and red ones. My desire to keep my sanity limits my reading.
Let’s consider the effects of cutting healthcare benefits and neutering clean energy project funding.
As Aaron Carroll, president of the health policy organization AcademyHealth, wrote in The Times, it would be foolish for Republicans to gut programs that help their constituents find medical solutions.
“We should be honest about these trade-offs: Families lose health insurance if we cut Medicaid or slash A.C.A. (Affordable Care Act) premium credits.” Children go without care. Clinics and hospitals in rural areas close. People suffer (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/opinion/medicaid-tax-cuts-republicans.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare).
Cutbacks in Biden-related projects have “put Republicans in the tricky position of defending a White House that deems money for clean energy a “waste of taxpayer dollars” while working behind the scenes to protect their towns from the loss of new manufacturing jobs, The Times reported.
“This is where we get a test of whether the Republican Party is a real political party serving its constituents, or a personality cult,” said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental advocacy groups.
“I expect thousands of people to be laid off, I expect workers to be furloughed, and I expect construction projects to halt,” Mr. Walsh said.
Sadly, we have repeatedly witnessed Trumped legislators opt to bend their knees before their master rather than protect the best interests of their constituents and country.
Almost eight years ago, on February 27, 2017, I deplored Republican legislators for being unwilling to challenge Trump’s nominees. History is repeating itself. So I will end with a paragraph from from that blog eight years ago:
“The bottom line is the public should not count on Republicans to counter any Trump initiative no matter how shameful it is, how obvious a conflict of interest it may be or how any nominee might lack the experience or credentials to effectively manage the people’s interests.”
