What Must Be Done: The Principle

The Republican Party represents the single greatest threat to the future of this country, and one of the greatest threats to the world. They stand in the way of anything we must accomplish to avoid climate catastrophe, as well as dealing with the myriad social and economic issues that still plague us. The party of Lincoln and Roosevelt and "Fighting Bob" LaFollette has descended into an authoritarian mixture of super wealthy Calhounites*, theocrats, and white nationalists. Barring a miracle, they are lost, and will not come back.  As a nation, our political goal must be:

The destruction of the Republican Party as a meaningful political force, and the subsequent realignment of the American political system.





This principle will sit at the center of what I discuss in this series of blog posts. We will discuss in greater detail what this means (and doesn't), the nature of partisanship and why it's essential to fixing what ails this country, and an analysis of the opportunities (and risks) surrounding this principle. Each post will be fairly short, as it's important to take the ideas in as well as possible, and to better guarantee I get through this.

The scope of this series is the political arena, and about the principles of governing or to wonk out about various policies. Those who govern should not operate with this as their guiding principle (although their acts of politics should follow it). I'm not interested in debating which health care policy is the best, or what the optimal tax rate is. Neither of those matter if we can't marshall the political victories necessary to pass that legislation, or to execute those policies in the executive branch. As such, this series won't endorse any specific candidate for any office, although you can guess which Presidential candidates would not get its endorsement.

In the next post, I'll go into more details about what this principle refers to, and just as importantly, what it doesn't.

* A reference to John Calhoun, the conservative South Carolina Senator who was the ideological forefather of the Confederacy. A strong believer in the idea that economic liberty is the highest form of liberty, and the federal government should only exist to protect personal property. Of course by "personal property" he mostly meant slaves. This subject will get more discussion at some point.