Mar 6, 2024 6 min read

By Kent James

The Republican Party has historically been the party of less government and low taxes, which is a coherent political philosophy. But since 1994, when Newt Gingrich helped Republicans take control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since the 1950s, Republicans have become the anti-government party, actively undermining the ability of the government to function because it supports their argument that government is bad, which helps them politically.

Gingrich realized that in a two-party system, politics is a zero-sum game; giving your opponent a win hurts you, so preventing the other party from accomplishing anything while they are in power helps you defeat them. This is clearly shown in Republican efforts to shut the government down by refusing to raise the debt ceiling to pay for bills already approved. Gingrich started this as a performative strategy, and Republicans pulled it again three times in the last year.

The Republicans won the House in 2022, and their inability to actually govern has been on full display since. It took them a record 15 votes to get a speaker, and for Kevin McCarthy to get the votes of the House Freedom Caucus, he had to submit to the humiliating condition that any single member of his party could call for a vote to change his leadership. U.S. Rep.Matt Gaetz of Florida pulled that trigger last summer, because McCarthy had the nerve to negotiate with Democrats to keep the country from defaulting on its debts and driving the world into financial chaos.

This led to another round of voting for a new speaker, which finally landed on Mike Johnson, a relatively unknown far-right congressman from Louisiana. Organizing your own party should not be so difficult. It is not a surprise that this has been the least productive Congress in recent history. In 2023, the House passed only 27 bills that became law. The previous Congress passed 365 over two years.

Support for Ukraine’s efforts to repel the Russian invasion would traditionally garner strong support from Republicans, who have always advocated a strong military footprint and traditionally seen Russia as an enemy to be contained. Trump has challenged this consensus within the Republican Party, however. His admiration for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and his criticism of past U.S. military efforts abroad left Democrats to push for aid to Ukraine.

Republicans claimed to be willing to support aid for Ukraine, but only if the Democrats fixed America’s southern border first. So, the Democrats, as serious parties do in a democracy with divided government, agreed to compromise. U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell designated James Lankford, a very conservative senator from Oklahoma, to lead the negotiations. The deal gave the Republicans most of what they wanted – closing the border if too many asylum seekers cross, and more money for security – while giving the Democrats very little of what they wanted, such as no path to citizenship or overall immigration reform.

Policywise, this was the best the Republicans were going to get. Democrats wanted the aid for Ukraine and wanted to take the border off the table for the election. But former President Trump wants to keep the crisis at the border alive as a political issue, because polls show it hurts Democrats.

Republicans have been posturing for months about the “crisis at the border,” but once Trump decided he wanted to run on the issue rather than solve it, the Republicans threw Lankford under the bus and declared the compromise dead in the water. Only a party that prioritizes politics over progress would claim there is a security crisis at the border, but then refuse to take any action on it until after the election.

Another political stunt is the House Republicans’ efforts to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Impeachment is a political process to remove someone from office who has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But Mayorkas has committed no crimes – he’s just overseen a change in policy, ending the “remain in Mexico” and Title 42 policies that Trump enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Impeaching Mayorkas makes impeachments seem partisan, lessening the impact of Trump’s two impeachments, and allows Republicans to rail against the “border crisis” while failing to actually do anything because the Senate will never vote to remove Mayorkas.

The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, because its members claim he was helping his dad make money selling out America. Republicans wanted to have a secret hearing, but the younger Biden saw how they had distorted the findings of their previous questioning of his friend, revealed when the transcripts were released. He said he’d be happy to testify, but in public. If Republicans were serious about investigating Biden, they would agree. But since their purpose is to try to harm the president through innuendo and unproven claims, they refused.

The Republican effort to impeach President Biden took a hit recently when the FBI arrested their star witness on charges that he had fabricated his claims and had been meeting with Russian intelligence.

The Republican Party is now all about performative politics, not getting things done. In the 2020 election, the Republican Party did not pass a party platform, defaulting to whatever Trump wanted. It’s hard to put that into policy, because Trump has no set policies, other than cutting taxes for the rich, which is not popular except among wealthy Republican donors. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act without offering a replacement and exit NATO.

Nihilism is not good policy.

American needs two parties that will challenge each other and compete for votes by trying to convince voters that they will make America better. Unfortunately, fearing the MAGA base, Republicans have abandoned their ideology to serve Trump, and Trump cannot think about anyone other than himself. Trump has no interest in using the presidency to accomplish anything. He wants to be president to stay out of jail and to use the government to punish his enemies.

America deserves better.

Kent James is a member of East Washington Borough Council.