The Republican Party is dissolving before our eyes, as did
the Whig Party it succeeded in 1860.
The Republican Congress of seven years ago extended the
Voting Rights Act (VRA) and it was signed off on by a Republican president.
(The Republican-controlled House vote was 390-33, the Republican-controlled
Senate vote 98-0.) Last year Republicans went out of their way to game the
election process with a variant form of poll taxation that failed, but brought
the VRA before the Supreme Court. It is unrealistic of the Roberts Court to
expect that the present Republican Congress will take any action in the best
interest of the country with respect to our civil rights. It has no interest in
it. That the court also threw out DOMA, despite GOP legal
defense spending, really puts the out-of-power party in an odd place – where a
major party dissolves, as did the Whig Party.
For several years the GOP agenda has appeared to be all
about repealing the Great Society and anything that supported it under the
Constitution. Rand Paul ran up the trial balloon opposing part of
the Civil Rights Act itself, prior to his election. Lindsay Graham,
Jon Kyl, and Mitch McConnell each supported repealing the 14th Amendment. The
party continues to support the disenfranchisement of women, not just the Roe v.
Wade decision but coming perilously close to the 19th Amendment itself; all of
it under the mantra “take the country back.”
The show is far from over. In these last few years of the
GOP existence we will still have to endure more crisis mismanagement, another
government shutdown and debt ceiling rerun, and a coup
d’état for the Speakership, although a short Speakership for the present
majority leader Eric Cantor should such a coup come before the midterm
elections. Scads of congressional Republicans may expect to be handed pink slips
by fed-up voters, whereupon Nancy Pelosi will reprise her Speaker of the House
role. Thereafter a crushing defeat in the 2016 general election will sound the
death knell.
So, what the Supreme Court has done is to harpoon the GOP by
remanding the Voting Rights Act to Congress for a rewrite and by striking down
key elements of the Defense of Marriage Act altogether. Speaker Boehner has
lost control of his caucus, as the recent Farm Bill debacle demonstrated,
and Congress’s approval rating is at a historic low. Blame Obama, blame the
Left, blame the Democrats, and condemn anyone who points it out; but the party
is over.
