Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Last week marked a turning point in the already strained (an understatement) relations between Democrats and Republicans.
After the Republicans in the Senate ignored the Democrats’ thorough impeachment case against President Donald Trump and kept him in office, and after Trump’s made-for-Hollywood State of the Union address, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy of Trump’s speech on camera. She made sure everybody in the room and watching on TV could see it.
It was an act of rudeness and contempt for a president who has shown more contempt for his opponents and even friendly critics than any president in recent memory, at least since the 19th Century.
More than that, I think Pelosi’s destruction of her copy of Trump’s speech was nothing short of a declaration of war. Pelosi thereby announced to the win-at-all-costs, brook-no-compromise-even-within-the party Republicans that the Democrats were ready to take off all gloves to make sure Trump is a one-term president.
Both parties are going full UFC, except with biting and hitting below the belt not only allowed but demanded by advocates for the combatants.
The GOP has already sent a political lynch mob to smother Pelosi in charges of contempt and disrespect, and to crucify Mitt Romney, the only Republican senator with the guts to vote his conscience on impeachment instead of his fear of the Trump mud-slinging machine.
Pelosi has already given signs she intends to do the same. On the day after Trump’s State of the Union presentation, Pelosi called his address a “state-of-mind” address having nothing to do with the state of the union. She added that Trump seemed “sedated” before the address. That’s as close as I’ve heard any Democrat come to using an innuendo hinting at a hidden personal problem.
That’s the kind of smear tactics the GOP has specialized in since the Trump campaign and that Trump wallows in.
In an echo of former Vice President Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativism,” Pelosi called Trump’s State of the Union speech a “manifesto of mistruths.”
Pelosi has a major problem, however. Trump is leading a monolith marching in lockstep.
The Democrats still haven’t decided whether to go full socialist or middle-of-the-road with too many candidates offering to go either way.
The Iowa Democratic Party’s software foulup has confused things and was a reminder of the glitches that tripped up the launch of Obamacare.
In the meantime, with a license to trample the Constitution granted by the U.S. Senate, the even more emboldened Trump now calls the Democrats “vicious as hell.”
Maybe, maybe not.
But after eight years of Republican vitriol during the Obama administration and three years of blanket condemnation under Trump, it is becoming plain the Democrats are finally mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it any more. (Apologies to “Network.”)
And the Democrats will, sadly, start the alley fighting because they’ve seen how well it works for the Republicans.
Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: