“Other Republican leaders have so far been silent in the wake of Trump’s White House address. Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, as well as Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Joni Ernst of Iowa and Todd Young of Indiana — all members of Senate GOP leadership — did not respond to requests for comment. House GOP conference chair Liz Cheney has also not responded to requests for comment.” — CNN, 11/5/20
After the press conference where the president appeared to attempt to undermine the very foundation of our sacred democracy, many have expected us to support his baseless, disturbing, and completely foreseeable efforts to delegitimize the election results. But, let our silence show that, as of a few hours ago, this is not what the Republican Party is about. Instead of supporting it, we are just not not supporting it.
To the shock of literally everyone — us included — it turns out there are some lines that we simply will not cross, and that line is verbalizing our support of destroying our country’s principles in such a blatant manner. However, we publicly have great respect for our new base of white men with scraggly pirate beards, so we have decided to follow our moral compass and just stand by while it happens. You may think staying silent while the president attempts to destroy the fabric of our democracy is spineless. And to that, we say that while our silence doesn’t openly denounce his actions, don’t forget that we also don’t not un-condone it.
Now that he has given us control of the Supreme Court and energized the openly hateful part of our base to the point that it became mainstream, he’s of no use to us anymore. So it’s time for us to cautiously distance ourselves from him and the insanity he has unleashed over everything these last four years. Although it might seem we should be held responsible, we’re not the bad guys. Come on, it’s us, the Grand Old Party! The Party of Lincoln! We just temporarily supported everything the president did since it kept us in power, even though it ultimately cost hundreds of thousands of American lives. Sure, there was no depth we were unwilling to sink to in support of our president. We even pretended Kanye West’s new stuff was good. But since it appears the president is about to lose the election, we are suddenly better than this. And it begins now, by doing nothing.
Instead, let’s turn our attention away from not denouncing our president’s attack on the one good thing left in America through pure lies with no basis in reality, and focus on things we love talking about. Like stripping health care from millions of the most vulnerable Americans during a pandemic. Or overturning a minimum of 50 years of progress on women’s rights. And especially obstructing anything our next president wants to do — even if it may genuinely help Americans in unprecedentedly disastrous times — making him completely ineffective and allowing us to easily take back the White House with a candidate who will have the exact same policies as Trump.
Until then, let’s all just forget this whole Trump thing ever happened. We already have.
Unless, of course, he somehow manages to win.