Leading Democratic Party figures, including President Biden, have lamented that America needs a viable two-party system. No it doesn't. At least as long as the Republican Party remains a cult of personality vehicle for Donald Trump.
The Republican Party is a fascist party devoted to the vainglorious whims of Trump. It seeks to prevent fair and honest elections. Its party chairman in Arizona, Kelli Ward, a Qanon devotee, has threatened to have Republican Party elected officials in Maricopa County arrested if they do not cease criticizing an "audit" on Maricopa County ballots ordered by the GOP-led Arizona State Senate. The audit is being carried out by a Florida fly-by-night company called Cyber Ninjas, which has no experience in auditing anything.
Trump loyalist and Michigan Republican co-chairman Ronald Weiser publicly called the state's top three Democratic Party officials Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson "witches" who deserved to be "burned at the stake." Oklahoma Republican chairman John Bennett has called for former Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to face a "firing squad."
Weiser and Bennett should be arrested, charged with making terroristic threats, and tossed in prison as the rest of the Republican Party comes under a federal order of banishment. Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are not permitted to operate in the United States and run candidates for office and neither should the Trump Republicans. They represent terrorist organizations but the Trump GOP is more of a clear and present danger than some ragtag guerrillas operating in the sands of the Middle East.
Other countries that have been plagued by personality cult political parties have faced one of two options after the party's dictatorial leader died or was overthrown in a coup. Either the party was declared illegal and disbanded or it received an extreme makeover.
Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party in Italy was banned under the nation's postwar Constitution. On October 10, 1945, the Allied Control Commission in Germany formally abolished the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. Nazi symbols and public homage to Hitler were also outlawed. In Spain, Generalissimo Francisco Franco's Falange Espaà ±ola Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista was dissolved in 1977 after Franco's death in 1975. The People's Alliance was founded by Franco officials but it pledged to honor the country's new post-fascist Constitution. It, in turned, morphed into the People's Party, which although right-wing, has generally governed Spain in a democratic fashion in recent times.
Either the Republican Party undergoes a de-Trumpification or, like the parties of Mussolini and Hitler, which rejected democracy and the rule of law, it must be abolished as both an existential and domestic terrorist threat to the security and safety of the United States. The Republican Party of Trump cannot be transferred back to the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, or Ronald Reagan. It's way too late for that.
Trump loyalists are gaining control over Republican organizations at not only the state and national levels but down to the county and municipal layers, wreaking havoc on city and town councils, election and school boards, and county boards of supervisors. Republicans Maricopa County board members, who reject the political lunacy of the governing Trump faction in their state party, are not only being threatened with arrest by the likes of Ward but are facing death threats from Trump loyalists and Qanon nut cases around the country.
The federal government needs to nip the Trump party in the bud before it continues to metastasize into a governing cult party bent on establishing a Trump family dictatorship. The sort of action taken to break the backs of the prewar German-American Bund, as well as the Ku Klux Klan, Symbionese Liberation Army, People's Temple of Jim Jones, and other dangerous groups should be employed against the Republican Party before it's too late. Seizure of financial assets, anti-racketeering measures, and laws designed to combat against groups seeking to overthrow the government of the United States should all be employed against the Trump Republican Party, Qanon and other support groups, and pro-Trump dark money sources.
At the very least, the Biden administration should increase and sustain the purge of Trump loyalists from the federal government, including the over 40 U.S. Attorneys appointed by Trump who remain in their jobs in federal prosecutor offices across the nation. Not all political purges are bad and, in fact, some serve as healthy renewals for democracies under attack from within.
Paraphrasing Jack Nicholson, playing the Joker in "Batman," "This country needs an enema!"
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