\u201cShould I stay or should I go now?\u201d That\u00a0question<\/a>, posed by the eminent political philosophers known as the Clash, is one that confronts any Republican with a glimmer of conscience. You used to belong to a conservative party with a white-nationalist fringe. Now it\u2019s a white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe. If you\u2019re part of that fringe, what should you do?\u201d<\/p>\n “Veteran strategist\u00a0Steve Schmidt<\/a>, who ran John McCain\u2019s 2008 presidential campaign, is the latest Republican to say \u201cno more.\u201d Recently he issued an anguished Twitter post: \u201c29 years and nine months ago I registered to vote and became a member of the Republican Party which was founded in 1854 to oppose slavery and stand for the dignity of human life,\u201d he\u00a0wrote<\/a>. \u201cToday I renounce my membership in the Republican Party. It is fully the party of Trump.\u201d”<\/p>\n On Halloween, Boot\u00a0did a long riff off Joe Biden\u2019s stump phrase, \u201cI\u2019m sick and tired of\u2026\u201d.\u00a0After an impressive listing of nauseating things Republicans have averted their gaze from or been complicit with, Boot throws all Republican candidates into the abyss.\u00a0Vote against all Republicans.\u00a0Every\u00a0single one<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n \u201c…Most of all, I\u2019m sick and tired of Republicans who feel that Trump\u2019s blatant bigotry gives them\u00a0license to do the same<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 with Rep. Pete Olson (R-Tex.) denouncing his opponent as an \u201cIndo-American carpetbagger<\/a>,\u201d Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis warning voters not to \u201cmonkey this up<\/a>\u201d by electing his African American opponent, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.)\u00a0labeling<\/a>\u00a0his \u201cPalestinian Mexican\u201d opponent a \u201csecurity risk\u201d who is \u201cworking to infiltrate Congress,\u201d and Rep.\u2009Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) accusing his opponent, who is of Indian Tibetan heritage, of \u201cselling out Americans<\/a>\u201d because he once worked at a\u00a0law firm that settled terrorism-related cases against Libya<\/a>.”<\/p>\n “If you\u2019re sick and tired, too, here is what you can do. Vote for Democrats on Tuesday. For every office. Regardless of who they are. And I say that as a former Republican. Some Republicans in suburban districts may claim they aren\u2019t for Trump. Don\u2019t believe them. Whatever their private qualms, no Republicans have consistently held Trump to account. They are too scared that doing so will hurt their chances of reelection.\u00a0If you\u2019re as sick and tired as I am of being sick and tired about what\u2019s going on, vote against all Republicans. Every single one. That\u2019s the only message they will understand.”<\/strong><\/p>\n George Will<\/b>. Who can resist an opportunity to say you agree with George Will? I readily give him plaudits for his writings on the travesty of the death penalty, but there\u2019s also this, from an essay in early summer,\u00a0\u201cVote Against the GOP This November<\/a>.<\/b>\u201d<\/p>\n “Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding\u00a0policy<\/a>\u00a0along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans \u2014 these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively \u2014 fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote.<\/p>\n The principle: The congressional Republican caucuses must be substantially reduced.”<\/strong><\/p>\n “In today\u2019s GOP, which is the president\u2019s plaything, he (Trump)\u00a0is<\/em>\u00a0the mainstream. So, to vote against his party\u2019s cowering congressional caucuses is to affirm the nation\u2019s honor while quarantining him.”<\/p>\n Will does go on to have things both ways, hoping that Senate and House machinery could be as gummed up under Democrats as it was under Republicans, which sort of loses his thread of logic. He\u2019s best when avoiding tangential\u00a0head-scratchers that show off his researchers’ liberal arts kitchen sink approach. But he does get to a central point, \u201c\u2026the unimportance of Republican control.\u201d I confess to admiring some turns of phrase, like \u201cConsider the melancholy example of House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), who wagered his dignity on the patently false proposition that it is possible to have sustained transactions with today\u2019s president, this Vesuvius of mendacities, without being degraded.\u201d\u00a0\u201cVesuvius of mendacities\u201d<\/strong>, that’s a keeper.<\/p>\n I was slower to include an August 9th essay by\u00a0Michael Gerson<\/strong>, “The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it<\/strong><\/a>.”<\/p>\n That’s not just because I see the GOP as\u00a0irredeemably corrupt and in need not of saving but of slipping beneath murky waters for the third time, but because whenever I seen Gerson I think of the phrase he penned for Condoleeza Rice, \u00a0\u201cWe don\u2019t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.\u201d That was a major pillar of the ruinous Iraqi WMD fraud by W and his\u00a0band of neocons, and of all the hellish tragedy it continues to pour from Pandora\u2019s Box. I can\u2019t listen to Gerson without dubbing him \u201cthe smoking mushroom.\u201d<\/p>\n But I digress. I don\u2019t want to add\u00a0legitimacy to Gerson\u2019s recurring message that Democrats had best\u00a0embrace so-called centrism, aka Republican Light. Or his notion that voters should vote strategically for Republican Senate candidates who are\u00a0\u201cmainstream”. There are no mainstream Republican candidates. And there are certainly no Lowell Weickers, no Mark Hatfields. There are only those who will go along to get along, with Trump and Mitch McConnell. They\u2019ll play the electorate for saps while doing the bidding of the Big Money, much of it dark in origin and purpose. And they’ll pluck the strings that make the lowest common denominators sing.<\/p>\n But I do want to cherrypick a few of Gersen\u2019s\u00a0points, including the importance of exposing administration corruption. “Under Republican control, important committees \u2014 such as\u00a0Chairman Devin Nunes\u2019s House Intelligence Committee<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 have become scraping, sniveling, panting and pathetic tools of the executive branch. Only Democratic control can drain this particular swamp.\u201d<\/p>\n Gerson gives a good account of the consequences of Republicans\u00a0retaining control of the House:<\/p>\n “Alternatively: If Republicans retain control of the House in November, Trump will (correctly) claim victory and vindication. He will have beaten the political performances of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in their first midterms. He will have proved the electoral value of racial and ethnic stereotyping. He will have demonstrated the effectiveness of circuslike distraction. He will have shown the political power of bold, constant, uncorrected lies. And he will gain many more enablers and imitators.\u201d<\/p>\n “Perhaps worst of all, a victorious Trump will complete his takeover of the Republican Party (which is already far along). Even murmured dissent will be silenced. The GOP will be fully committed to a 2020 presidential campaign conducted in the spirit of\u00a0George C. Wallace<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a campaign of racial division, of rural\/urban division, of religious division, of party division that metastasizes into mutual contempt.”<\/p>\n Exactly why Gerson\u2019s concerns don\u2019t also apply to Republican control of the Senate escapes me. But after meandering with the conservative columnists\u2019 obligatory genuflections to Reagan and Bush the Elder, he gets to a decent finish. “In a democracy, a vote is usually not a matter of good and evil. It is a matter of weighing competing goods and choosing lesser evils. The possible outcomes this November come down to this: Trump contained, or Trump triumphant…In this case, a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience.”<\/p>\n Because there are too many Democrats that are so-called centrists, an increasingly non-descriptive term that drips with wishy-washy, there needs to be a thumping victory by Democrats. It needs to be big enough to increase progressive heft that pulls the party back toward the traditions of FDR, and out of the clutches of the Big Money. That\u2019s not a quick and easy, but the effort needs to get underway the day after the election, ignoring the pundits crowing about magic in the middle of the road. As Jim Hightower put it,\u00a0\u201cThere\u2019s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.”<\/p>\n Much has been made that of those independent voters who view both Democratic and Republican parties as turkeys, there\u2019s a growing shift to viewing Democrats as the lesser turkey. My worry is that voting for the lesser turkey isn\u2019t all that much of a motivator to show up at the polls. But if you know potential voters who are sitting back until they see a solid dime\u2019s difference, send these essays along to them, particularly the one by Boot that minces no words. More years of the\u00a0current clowns in charge is not a luxury our democracy has, every day brings new risk.<\/p>\n The Clash\u2019s\u00a0\u201cShould I Stay or Should I Go<\/a>\u201d video<\/p>\n![\"Nancy](\"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Last-Supper-of-The-Second-Year.jpg\")
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<\/p>\nEDITOR’S NOTE:<\/h5>\n