The Republican Party we once knew is gone. All that’s left is the chaos of MAGA | Opinion

When the media has not been reporting the latest developments out of Israel and Gaza, it’s reporting on the malfunctioning of Congress. Too often in recent reports, it seems the institution of Congress is somehow responsible for the current stalemate and not the Republican Party that has made a spectacle of itself with vote after vote cast for the most dysfunctional Republican they can rally around.

At one point, Trump even bragged about being asked to take over the House since the Speaker does not have to be an elected member of the U.S House.

This nonsense of blowing up the machinery of government and falling on the sword of self-righteousness has its roots in the Reagan era. The former Hollywood actor, who decided to bring some new and simplistic scripts to American politics declared in his first inaugural speech in 1980 that “…government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

Later, in the decade, he would expound on the role of government in our lives by claiming that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m here from the government, and I’m here to help you.” If nothing else, it was good for a Republican belly laugh but not for a society in need of good governance.

I was teaching American Government when Reagan blasted out his first simple-minded axiom of politics, and I could see during the 80’s decade how my students’ perception of public service changed.

No longer was public service broadly viewed as an admirable career objective. It was a long way from 1960 when President John F. Kennedy left a message with the youth of the day: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” That was certainly the impetus for me and my contemporaries to consider careers in government and the newly created Peace Corps.

Gone are the days of speakers such as John Boehner on the Republican side of the aisle and Democrats like Tip O’Neill, both of whom knew how to negotiate and compromise to achieve a result acceptable to most Americans. By the time the ‘90s arrived, it was Newt Gingrich attempting to halt the orderly delivery of government services that encouraged a new generation of young Republicans to get involved for the purpose of obstructing and shutting down government.

As we watch this current class of dysfunctional Republicans transform Congress into a sinkhole of democracy, with a minority of right-wingers holding up the work of the body, it sure appears as though Reagan and Gingrich have won out over Kennedy and, to some extent, this helps explain the stalemate in Washington that has now become par for the course.

Trump explains the rest.

The despicable standards he requires of candidates seeking his blessing surfaced just recently when he declared that no candidate for Speaker should be considered who did not vote to overturn the 2020 election. With another deadline for government shutting down just around the corner, as of this writing, his Republican minions haven’t even found enough of their own members to put their slim majority in control of things.

These are learned behaviors passed from one generation to the next and their current role in demeaning the role of government in a free society came to mind when I saw Republican Sen. Mitt Romney comment last week on the CBS Sunday Morning show on the long-term impact of today’s politics on our politics and culture. He noted how Trump and his mindless supporters in Congress have removed the guardrails of our political culture as it turns more vulgar and abusive at the hands of Trump.

What impact might that have on the next generation who grows up watching this congressional debacle produced and directed by Trump and his Republican Party?

How does a young person decide to run for public office or take a job in government?

No doubt, it has much to do with today’s officeholders inspiring young people to consider a career in government. That doesn’t leave much hope for the future of the Republican Party and its makeup in future Congresses. All we can expect from the Republican Party is more of the same at a moment in our history when America needs a functioning Congress to work with a president on critical domestic policies, but also considerable foreign policy challenges left unattended.

When Congressional Republicans trash the norms of a democracy — like constructing ideological barriers to a successful election result for speaker — that were once successfully determined by negotiation and compromise, they send signals to younger generations that it is permissible to blow up the political process and shut down government if it pleases the MAGA base.

There is considerable irony in the fact that the Republican majority has members who ran for office on how broken government was and now that they are in power, they are proving it with their juvenile and obstreperous behavior. One Republican from the right-wing Freedom Caucus, Rep. Debbie Lesko of Arizona, announced her retirement last week and attributed her decision to the fact that the House cannot govern.

Guess what Rep. Lesko? You have met the enemy, and it is you and your Republican Party.

As news of a broken American government travels across the world, America loses its luster as a democracy and seems to be signaling governments across the globe to dip their toes in the waters of autocracy. A new version of Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election is now playing out in Poland where the right-wing ideologue Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the incumbent of the Law and Justice Party, lost last week to an opposition government that promised to restore democratic standards, but then loser Kaczynski claimed victory, threatened a constitutional crisis, and predicted days of fighting ahead for Poland.

It’s America’s worst export — copycat politics taking its cue from Trump and 147 Republicans in Congress who voted to overturn the 2020 election result and now shut down the work of Congress.

The crowning blow to the public perception of the Republican Party as one of the two major political parties in the U.S. responsible for governing the nation had to be the nomination of Congressman Jim Jordan for speaker. This guy can best be described as a keg of dynamite thrown into the politics of electing a speaker and conducting the business of the House. As Rep. Mike Simpson pointed out in a recent column defending his vote against Jordan for Speaker, Jordan’s resume is rife with vote after vote against major programs like the Farm Bill on which so many Americans depend. Idaho’s resident toady for the far right, Rep. Russ Fulcher, had no problem voting for the nihilist Jordan.

It was my fondest hope that this column could end with a sliver of hope for our young people whose numbers have rejected the MAGA platform. But that will not be the case with the election of MAGA Congressman Mike Johnson who is another hand-picked Trump candidate.

Imagine how inspiring it would have been for the next generation to witness the reformulation of a party that has lost its way in American Politics. With this new speaker who is both an election denier and a climate denier, that will not be happening soon. The best we can hope for now is young voters turning out in historic proportions in 2024. In the meantime, the so-called Republican Party has devolved to its rock-bottom place in American politics according to any standard of democracy and the rule of law.

It is no more.

It is simply Trump’s MAGA Party.

Bob Kustra served as president of Boise State University from 2003 to 2018. He is host of Readers Corner on Boise State Public Radio and is a regular columnist for the Idaho Statesman. He served two terms as Illinois lieutenant governor and 10 years as a state legislator.