Reprinted from hartmannreport.com
They offer nothing to improve schools, support families, help small businesses, lower drug prices, rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure, or heal the racial divide - just performance art
Today's Republican Party has stopped even pretending to have "ideas." Instead, they've become the party of performance art, and it's hurting America.
Last week Hillary Clinton pointed out at a meeting of New York Democrats:
"Republicans will claim they're on the side of parents and family values. But they will do nothing for actual parents or families. Nothing on child care, nothing on paid leave, nothing to help working moms and dads get by and get ahead."
Now Republicans across the country are planning to imitate the Canadian Trucker Tantrum, trying to pull together enough vehicles to shut down Washington, DC the day of President Biden's State of the Union speech next Tuesday.
Why are American truckers traveling to DC? Something about federal vaccine mandates that don't exist, or maybe federal mask mandates that don't exist, or maybe they're hoping to pick up a date? Who the hell knows?
This is what the Republican Party has been reduced to: performance art.
The Biden administration put forward a very positive program to deal with the massive crisis of drug addiction in America and Republicans have hysterically gone off on a lie, accusing him of wanting to pass out free crack pipes. It's performance art that will lead to more overdoses, hepatitis, and HIV deaths.
JD Vance, the morbidly rich banker who wants to be the next Republican senator from Ohio, tried to grab headlines by viciously attacking George HW Bush's Desert Storm Commander, General Barry McCaffery, while saying America should ignore Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Your entire time in military leadership we won zero wars," Vance tweeted at the general who actually won that 3-day war, driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. "You drank fine wine at bullshit security conferences while thousands of working class kids died on the battlefield. Oh, by the way, how much do you stand to gain financially from a war with Russia, Barry?"
Apparently there are limits to performance art, at least in public forums like Twitter. (McCaffrey, by the way, doesn't drink wine.) The Lincoln Project's Fred Wellman tweeted in reply to Vance:
"You piece of sh*t. He nearly lost his arm in Vietnam. He led the 24th Infantry Division in our massive assault into Iraq in Desert Storm. You"were briefly a f*cking PAO in an air wing. I can't wait to see your loser ass absolutely shamed on election day. Coward."
Outrage is a powerful force, but it tends to be short-lived. Like leaning on a hot stove, there's a lot of noise and jumping around but in the end nothing productive usually comes out of it.
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