Try as I might, I can no longer ignore the elephants in the room.
by Erik Good, Big Horn County Democrats Chair.
You shouldn’t either. I participated in the Hands-Off event and the No Kings Day event. I’ve participated in the non-partisan meetings of concerned citizens who are trying to figure out what else we can do to fight against the current state of affairs in America. I was glad to see registered Republicans there, in addition to the Democrats I would have expected, and I was glad to see that, even in our very conservative corner of the United States, the numbers of people showing up and the numbers of people driving by to honk in support of our message greatly exceeded the numbers of people driving by to flip us off or spray us with their muffler noise and exhaust fumes.
It felt reassuring, in those moments, to think that there were people on all sides of the political spectrum who were rejecting the decisions and actions of the administration of the 47th President of the United States. As we left each event, and as we communicated in messages and meetings in the weeks that followed, we promised that we would come together to do it all again, and that felt hopeful as well. We were going to turn things around.
But also, in the weeks and months that have followed those events, the US Congress has passed the One Big Ugly Bill, redistributing even more money to those who already have more than they could ever spend, from the pockets of those who don’t have enough to stay fed, warm, and healthy, and ruthlessly axing myriad services that many Americans rely on to keep themselves afloat. ICE has continued to target anyone who is not white enough or who speaks with an accent or who has the wrong job, or who hangs out in the wrong place, for harassment, detainment, and threatened or actual deportation, and the Supreme Court has blessed their behavior, without providing any real explanation of how they’re getting past the whole 4th Amendment violation of it all.
The US military has killed multiple boatloads of civilians in international waters, without providing any legitimate justification or due process that would make that action anything other than a war crime, and the administration has indicated their intention to continue doing so, questions and concerns notwithstanding. The president has continued to impose tariffs illegally and to rescind or redistribute congressionally approved appropriations from all manner of organizations – illegally – and again, the Supreme Court has looked the other way, disregarding the separation of powers written into the framework of our Constitution, as well as the laws that have been passed to reinforce that framework.
Government organizations, including but not limited to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), have been decimated by the removal of experts and professionals whose expertise does not correspond with the agenda of Project 2025 or the MAGA idiot-verse, with repercussions that are likely to be catastrophic for all kinds of Americans. The National Guard has been deployed to cities led by Democrats to battle fictitious “crime” waves, despite the absence of any current or imminent violent uprising, disregarding the law forbidding the use of the military for law enforcement purposes, and blatantly ignoring the fact that crime in every one of those cities is at historic lows.
In the aftermath of the absolutely inexcusable assassination of a conservative political figure, prominent Republicans – beginning, as always, with the President of the United States – defied the decades old admonition against politicizing these kinds of tragedies, and immediately and loudly and aggressively pointed their fingers and shot off their mouths leftward. To make it all that much worse, they then refused to apologize for or even acknowledge their mistake when it turned out that the shooter was not really who they were claiming he was. A toxic group chat surfaced containing messages posted by prominent members of the Young Republicans heavily featuring racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic tropes, which the vice-president excused as the actions of “kids,” although the majority of members of the chat are in their 20’s and 30’s, as if bigotry from children is somehow understandable and excusable.
Any one of these situations taken alone is grounds for serious concern about the well-being of our democracy and about the functioning of the system of checks and balances that the founders of the United States strove to put in place. Taken altogether – and recognizing that they are merely the prominent tip of a very large iceberg – they are grounds for impeachment and conviction, for immediate dismissal, or at the very least, for the loud and public condemnation of the people responsible, by decent, law-abiding, democracy loving citizens on all sides of the political spectrum.
That the outcry remains audible only from the usual suspects on the left is because of the elephants in the room. And, as I said, I can’t ignore them anymore. I consciously use the plural “people” in referencing who is responsible for the situation we are in. As tempting as it may be for some to insist that somehow this is all about the president, or all about the president and a small handful of rogue and incompetent minions he has installed in places of power, that simply is not the case. They may be the most visible and the loudest buffoons destroying our democratic republic, but they have not accomplished what they have accomplished in isolation. They have accomplished it in absolute cooperation with the evasions, the blank stares, the winks, the nods, the platitudes, the cowardice, and most of all, the resounding silence of the members of the party to which they all belong.
The GOP. The elephants.
Believing this as I do, I am struggling to muster the enthusiasm or the energy or the optimism for another rally, for participating in another town hall, for showing my concern in the audience as another expert from another sector of American society that is about to change dramatically for the worse comes to share his or her view of what we should expect and how we might fight back.
It’s time to address the elephants in the room, who say they are not on board with what is happening yet continue to be registered members of the party that is making it happen. It’s time to say to them: this cannot go on in this way.
It’s time for the elephants in the room to step up.
It’s getting harder and harder to feel like we are working together as we plan for another event. It’s getting harder and harder to feel like we are a team fighting for what we agree we don’t like or want. It’s getting harder and harder, in the face of unrelenting bad news, for me to summon more energy for working beside you, while you decline to take the most obvious and impactful action that could and should be taken to strengthen the resistance and to bring about the changes you claim we want. You won’t leave the Republican Party. You won’t renounce your affiliation with the people responsible for the hell we are experiencing. Why is this not step one in any action plan we are concocting? Why has this not been done already, months ago? Why are you still a part of that group, while working with me in this group?
I can already hear your objections.
I already know that you will first and foremost say you are a Republican, because you believe in small government, fiscal conservatism, the rule of law, and a robust military. And I say to you – take a look around. That is not what the MAGA version of the Republican Party believes in. Please tell me which Republican is actively fighting for the values that you claim make you a Republican? To be sure, I believe there are plenty of Republicans, including many in positions of power, who still believe in those values, deep down. But who’s fighting for them? No one. No Republican is publicly fighting for the things that you say make you a Republican. The only public fighting Republicans are doing now is in favor of the awful things that have happened in our country in the last nine months. Who was the last Republican who publicly and insistently and unrelentingly stood for your values? Was it Mitt Romney? Was it Liz Cheney? Was it Adam Kinzinger? Was it John McCain?
Please notice – those Republicans are gone. They have been silenced. They have been taken over by the MAGAts. If that were not the case, I would be writing a very different piece right now, about how the situation we are in boils down to a person’s ability or inability to imagine and appreciate a life different from his or her own.
The reality now is that a vanishingly small handful of prominent Republicans still on the scene have from time to time, made a token effort to signal their disapproval of some component or other of the Republican agenda. In the end, they – Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Josh Hawley (shockingly), Marjorie Taylor Greene (even more shockingly), Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, Thom Tillis, Thomas Massie, Ted Cruz – all cave in and follow the party line, or more cravenly, they take their turns showing token “resistance” so as not to piss off their constituents too much, knowing that their vote against the MAGA agenda won’t ultimately matter whether they resist it or not. They have been subsumed and cowed by the followers of the man whose first and only priority is and has always been enriching and empowering himself, and that has happened despite the fact that, in the course of enriching and empowering himself, with the collusion and the blessing of the GOP, he has regularly disregarded the values – the fiscal conservatism, the smaller government, the robust military, the rule of law – that they, and you, believe make you Republicans. Beyond that, he has, in both the short and long term, caused terrible harm to his followers’, and the rest of the country’s, ultimate safety and wellbeing.
For all intents and purposes, those Republicans who do still believe in the values of the old Republican Party, deep down, are as silent as the grave. Were they to combine forces and pursue the impeachment and conviction that are so richly deserved by this president, he would be gone in 90 days. They know they can, they know they should, they know that it is deserved without question – and yet they do not. They will not fight for your values. They will not fight for what is right. They will not fight for America. Why???
They will not sacrifice their power. They are afraid of losing their positions, and they are terrified of the orange bully, and so they do nothing. This is the Republican Party now. The other one, with the values you believed in, is gone.
You will say, but we will come back. When this president is gone, when the influence of MAGA dwindles when his term ends, the party will go back to what it once was. Respectfully – I think you’re fooling yourself. This IS the Republican Party. When the reckoning for the turn they have taken to unrepentant bigoted fascistic cultism comes – and it will come – the Republicans of this era will be viewed as the National Socialist party of Germany – the Nazis – are viewed now (or used to be viewed, in any event). The Republican Party as you know it, as you wish it were, is dead. It’s done. It has gone to the extreme end of the trajectory to which it has been going for a long time now. For over a century, beginning with the KKK and the unrepentant racism of the post-slavery south, through Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh and the Nazi sympathies that were bubbling heading into the Second World War, straight through Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater and Phylis Schlafly and Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and Pat Buchanan and the George Bushes right up to Donald Trump, this is where the Republican Party has been heading. At every step of that journey, when it mattered, when their backs were to the wall, the Republican Party chose mendacity, bigotry, divisiveness, authoritarianism, fearmongering, obstructionism, and hatred to solidify their power. This is the result of those choices.
This IS the Republican Party. This is your party. These are the elephants in the room.
I say again – the time has come. If you are with them, be with them. Own it. I believe in pluralism, even if I do not believe in what the Republican Party is doing right now. But do not count on my cooperation or my commiseration in combatting all the myriad things about them that you don’t like, that don’t correspond with your beliefs, that aren’t what you claim you voted for, when you yourself are unwilling to take the first obvious step in fighting them. One way or the other, I’ll be fighting them, to be sure – but if you’re insisting on being one of them, I’ll be fighting them in my way, which may not necessarily be our way. You can no longer claim ignorance. You can no longer claim that this isn’t what “real” Republicans stand for. Nothing that has happened has been surprising, unless you have been stubbornly ignoring what has been publicly stated and celebrated. Nothing that has been done has been accomplished out of the blue.
This is the agenda of the Republican Party. This is the blueprint documented in Project 2025. It has been published, publicized, and acknowledged. This is literally what your party said it was going to do should their president win. And look at that. Here we are. If you are against it, then be against it. Because I believe the single most influential action you can take to signal your rejection of what is happening is not a rally, or a letter to the editor, or searching high and low for a candidate courageous enough to espouse your positions, or pushback against a Republican legislator at a town hall.
The first step is to leave the party. They will lose power when they lose power. So long as they can count all of you as being behind them, with all of the legislative and financial rewards that accrue as a result of your membership, their power will remain intact. You are allowing them to remain in power. That power is allowing them to do what they’re doing now.
You will say, but where can I go?
That’s not for me to decide, but don’t act like there aren’t options. There are other parties. There is registration as an Independent. Go anywhere else. But don’t stay with the Republicans. I know, in Wyoming at least, you will say you need to be a Republican so you can vote in primaries for local offices. We all know that those votes don’t ultimately make a difference. Come on, you know that. I challenge any one of you to share the time that your vote in a Republican primary was the deciding factor in an election. I bet you can’t. As I’ve admitted before, I became a Republican briefly to try to honor Liz Cheney’s integrity, if not many of her other values, thinking, as you do, that it would matter. It made no difference. It came nowhere NEAR making any difference. Liz Cheney didn’t lose by a handful of votes. She lost by 65,000 votes – 37 percentage points. Harriet Hagemann got more than twice as many votes. Cheney lost, two to one. But even if those votes had made a difference – this is more important. The havoc being wrought by Republicans federally eclipses irretrievably anything that your local sheriff or mayor or county clerk could ever think of undertaking. Even if your vote in that primary did matter, you’re burning down the forest to save one tree.
You will say, I can’t be a Democrat, because I don’t agree with the Democrats on this or that, or I can’t be in a party with this person or that person. You certainly don’t have to become a Democrat. However, I can’t help but notice that the fact that you don’t agree with this or that in the MAGA agenda hasn’t affected your ability to be a Republican. Neither have you been forced from the party by the fact that your membership includes such reprehensibles as Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Mike Lee, Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, JD Vance, or the current president (who should be – and should have been – dealbreaker enough all by himself, to be honest). For easily the last ten years, and probably many, many more, the Republican Party has comprised any number of explicit or implicit intentions and actions, and any number of despicable individuals, with which and with whom you don’t agree. And yet, here you are. A Republican.
I would also point out – at this time, the Democratic Party is the only thing standing between you and the America you say you don’t want. As I asked before, please name the Republican who is standing against Project 2025 and the MAGA agenda and the 47th president’s administration? I challenge you, again. Give a name. Which Republican is loudly rejecting the litany of horrors I recited above? Which Republican is leading the charge to force this president and his regime to adhere to the laws of the United States, starting with the laws stated in the US Constitution?
Nope. That’s ALL Democrats.
I understand there are some things about the Democratic platform and party that you may not like. There are things about it I don’t like. But you’re going to have to decide – do you want this MAGA America, or do you not? The Republican Party is NOT going to change. It’s too late for that. There is certainly room in our country for another party that more closely advocates for the values and beliefs that you hold. That party does not exist right now. There is the MAGA Republican Party, and there is the Democratic Party, and there is a vast sea of folks who decline for one reason or the other to identify with either party, or who claim not to be “political” while they have their hands out for politically created benefits, and while their expectations for the continuation and expansion of the politically negotiated government services they rely on remain intact. They are hypocrites, or they are too ashamed of or buried in their own ignorance of the complexities of politics to admit that they have no earthly idea which party they are or should be a part of, beyond the Me Me Me party.
But you – you have chosen. You have chosen to be a Republican.
Twenty years from now, when hindsight resolves to 20/20, you will have chosen to be a member of the party that turned its back on democracy, on the Constitution, and on the rule of law, in favor of racism, fearmongering, unrepentant lying, and blatant self-dealing. I respect different opinions. I believe the civilized and reasoned debate of opposing viewpoints is the hallmark of a healthy democracy, and that finding a way to work together through our differences makes us stronger, not weaker. The members of the Republican Party, in the form to which it has evolved, do not believe that. You know they don’t. They believe quite the opposite, as they manifest through every action, every uncontested executive order, every toxic social media post, every outrageous lie proclaimed proudly and vehemently even in the face of facts, every nasty name or evil motive assigned to Democrats without proof or reason, and every pearl clutching histrionics session they conduct on Faux News. As many of them, including the president, have said in the last weeks, they want all opposition to their beliefs ended (while still claiming to believe in the First Amendment), and they are happy to do whatever it takes to bring that about. This is their plan. It is underway.
This is the party of the elephants.
And, because it’s your party, at the end of the day, it is even more your responsibility than it is mine to keep them accountable. And so I am here, asking the elephants in the room: What are you going to do about it?
Please share your thoughts