Gee, I’m old enough to remember when Republicans were the Law and Order party.
They won quite a few elections — including president in 1988 — by accusing Democrats of being soft on crime.
Of course, back then Donald Trump was a Democrat.
It’s easy to say it’s all about politics and that both parties play dirty. That’s what Republicans say, but there are two things that give the lie to that.
First, only one party is trying to prevent people from voting.
Second, only one party is trying to give elected officials the power to reject and/or reverse the results of elections they don’t like.
Check it out if you don’t believe me. There is not one state of the 50 in which Democrats are trying to prevent people from voting or give state officials that right to reject election results.
Not one.
They don’t need to cheat. In seven of the last eight presidential elections, the Democratic nominee has received more votes than the Republican. The only one in which the GOP nominee was 2004, where George W. Bush got more votes than John Kerry. Bush was the only ohter candidate to come close, trailing Al Gore by 500,000 votes in 2000.
Trump didn’t come close either time, losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by nearly 3 million votes and losing to Joe Biden in 2020 by more than 7 million.
So at least on a national level, it becomes less and less likely in every cycle that Republicans can win without cheating.
For one thing, their voters are getting older and dying.
For another, younger voters coming along are far more liberal about so-called cultural issues than Republicans are. Eventually, they’ll have to surrender on same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ issues. Their influence will live longer than it should because of the two Supreme Court seats Mitch McConnell stole for the GOP.
History isn’t going to remember Republicans fondly, and that’s before we even get to the latest crop of right-wing bizarros in Congress. We’ve talked about them before and we will again, but that’s enough for one post.