It is usually identified that, beneath the tutelage of former President Donald Trump, the Republican Get together deserted long-held conservative orthodoxies and pursuits — suppose reducing the debt and deficit and anti-protectionism — in favor of no matter Trump simply mentioned. For the 4 years Trump was in workplace, the GOP busied itself with the initiatives he ordained necessary, and little else.
Now, with Trump relegated to Mar-a-Lago and his floundering social media endeavor, the GOP’s been left to its personal units. Lest you suppose lawmakers have been sitting on their fingers, they’ve truly been dizzyingly busy introducing a whole bunch of items of laws everywhere in the nation.
Certainly, Republican state lawmakers throughout America have launched greater than 500 anti-abortion legal guidelines … simply this 12 months, which is barely midway completed.
Since 2021, Republican state legislators have launched greater than 200 payments to fight crucial race idea.
Pushed by the identical GOP outrage machine, there have been 1,586 books banned in colleges between August of 2021 and April of 2022, most of which focused LGBTQ individuals and other people of shade.
Persons are additionally studying…
In response to the Brennan Heart for Justice, Republicans launched a staggering 440 payments with provisions that may limit voting entry in 2021. Thus far in 2022, they’re at 393.
By the sheer quantity of recent legal guidelines, it nearly feels just like the GOP is fixing precise issues. Besides in relation to these, Republicans have change into the Do Nothing Get together.
After a slew of horrific mass shootings, together with in Uvalde, the place 19 kids have been senselessly slaughtered, the overwhelming majority of elected Republicans have supplied zero adjustments to our present gun legal guidelines.
Even issues which might be well-liked — together with amongst Republican voters — like common background checks and boosting the age minimal to buy an assault rifle, have been met with whole opposition from lawmakers.
The place Republicans have supplied options, as BuzzFeed laid out, they’ve not explicitly addressed weapons, however as an alternative inane issues like locking doorways, extra fencing, window coverings, bulletproof backpacks and prayer in class.
A stunning new ballot from CBS Information/YouGov reveals simply how uninterested Republicans are in doing one thing about these tragic incidents.
Whereas 85% of Democrats and 73% of independents say mass shootings may be stopped, almost half of Republicans mentioned mass shootings must be accepted as a part of a free society.
It’s onerous to wrap your thoughts round that alarming apathy, the capitulation that we should simply reside with the mass homicide of harmless individuals in bunches, and the perplexing irony in asserting {that a} society during which grocery shops, film theaters, church buildings, synagogues, malls, companies, information retailers, concert events, hospitals, sporting occasions and colleges are not protected continues to be one way or the other “free.”
However it’s not simply mass shootings. Republicans have determined we simply have to simply accept a complete host of very actual issues.
After dismissing COVID-19 as nothing greater than a chilly, then promising it will be gone inside a couple of months, then blaming Democrats for inventing new variants, many Republicans insisted we simply should reside with it, and fought frequent sense precautions, like masking, social distancing, vaccines and boosters. All of this, whereas COVID-19 ravaged pink states. Greater than one million Individuals have died from COVID-19 — and but a majority of Republicans consider the federal government spent an excessive amount of cash combating the lethal virus.
Republicans additionally suppose there’s little to be completed concerning the Jan. 6 revolt on the Capitol, a lethal occasion meant to overturn a democratic election. The chair of the Republican Nationwide Committee mentioned the investigation into that darkish day quantities to the “persecution of extraordinary residents engaged in respectable political discourse.” Trump has mentioned that if he have been re-elected in 2024, he’d take into account pardoning anybody convicted in that assault. Will he additionally take into account pardoning others who assault and kill law enforcement officials on the streets of our cities? The query solutions itself.
Equally, Republicans don’t appear in any respect involved concerning the very actual rise in home terrorism incidents from white supremacists and anti-government extremists on the far proper. Fox Information’s Tucker Carlson mentioned bluntly that right-wing home terrorism “doesn’t exist.” (It does, and it’s up.) And each Republican lawmaker within the Home, save one, voted towards a invoice to develop assets to research and reply to home terrorism.
Guess we’ll simply should reside with that, too.
Identical goes for local weather change, the struggle in Ukraine, and infrastructure points, about which most Republican lawmakers need to do little or nothing.
These aren’t liberal issues. They’re American issues, they usually’re actual and pressing. If it weren’t so intent on inventing wedge points and waging tradition wars, the GOP may provide conservative concepts to assist resolve them.
As a substitute, the Do Nothings maintain doing nothing. In spite of everything, it’s a lot simpler to slay imaginary dragons.
(S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.)
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