Of all the crazy and stupid things done by the GOP since Trump beat what’s-her-name in 2016, today’s vote on the military budget not only is the single dumbest and stupidest thing they have ever done, but they did it without any direction or help from Donald Trump.
So, for all the talk about how Trump still dominates the GOP, and how everyone on the red team is still afraid of saying or doing anything that might be seen as a criticism or rejection of the MAGA brand, I’m beginning to think that, if anything, all Trump did by creating MAGA was to take advantage of what the GOP had already become.
What I’m referring to a section of the military budget legislation which abolishes the requirement that all troops receive a vaccination for Covid-19, and now lets military personnel decide for themselves whether to be protected against the virus or not.
When the Pentagon started to require the Covid-19 vaccination back in 2021, refusal to receive the treatment meant that unprotected individuals were told their military service had come to an end. Not only did the GOP now demand that the immunization requirement be rescinded, but when the new Congress starts its work in 2023, they will try to reinstate and provide back pay for troops who were – ready? – ‘unfairly targeted’ by the Biden regime.
Unfairly targeted – that’s too good to be true. How do you dare use a metaphor for shooting someone with a gun who might be not only walking around with a live virus in their systems, but could also spread the disease to anyone else who hasn’t yet take the shot?
Were it just the case that this vote reflected the last gasps of Trumpism within the GOP, it could be taken as a necessary price to pay in order to finally get that schmuck out of the way. If it were only that simple an explanation, but it’s not.
The Republican resistance to the Covid-19 immunizations is just the latest chapter to a long history of promoting conspiracy theories which has been part and parcel of GOP political culture for at least the last sixty years, if not further back than that.
Remember the John Birch Society? The Birchers started their organization in 1958, and tried to sell the idea that there really was a Red under every bed. Or at least under every liberal bed. Actually, a few of those lunkheads are still around, but their presence has been superseded by the more professional conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.
I once walked into a John Birch Society storefront to see what these birds were all about. And believe me when I tell you that the three little old Bircher ladies sitting there handing me their pamphlets were just as convinced that liberalism represented the same assault on God Bless America that the Proud Boys now believe is represented by George Soros and the Deep State.
Although he later repudiated the John Birch Society because they went ‘too far,’ Barry Goldwater relied on their energy and outreach when he went for the GOP Presidential nomination in 1964. When the more moderate wing of the GOP, led by Nelson Rockefeller, tried to insert a plank condemning extreme organizations like the Birchers into the party’s platform at the 1964 convention, the plank was shouted down.
Can you imagine what would happen at the 2024 GOP convention if a delegate tried to get a plank approved that would officially condemn the MAGA movement for being too extreme? To the contrary, at this point the various Republican Presidential wannabees (Cruz, DeSantis, et, al.) are saying whatever they have to say to show their attachment to the MAGA brand.
Who has been the leader in the Senate to abolish the military’s vaccination mandate? Ted Cruz. And this asshole went to Harvard?
There’s no global warming, there’s no reason to be vaccinated, there’s really no reason to learn how to read and write because you can solve every problem by relying on your common sense. Sarah Palin could easily manage putting together the Federal budget because the way she put it, she had plenty of experience sitting at her kitchen table figuring out what she needed to spend for groceries that week.
The GOP has been insulting its supporters by talking to them as if they are a bunch of dummies for the past sixty or more years.
Think they have learned a lesson from what happened in Georgia last week? I’m not so sure.