Positively Piffly

By Zamboni

Vladimir Putin is about to invade Ukraine, and the GOP and Fox "News" are supporting him. Incredible, isn't it? Republicans clearly think that with his threats driving up gas prices and driving down the stock market, Vlad is sticking a pin in the Democrats for 2022 and 2024. Nothing — not US national security, NATO, defending democracy, or, heck, world peace — is more important to them than getting and keeping power.

The word "traitors" has been tossed around, and it's difficult to argue with it. With their love of Putin, their knee-bending to Vlad lackey Benedict Donald, their Big Lie, and the insurrection of January 6, the Republican Party has now become officially anti-democratic.

But don't take it from us — take it instead from Republicans themselves. There are still some who are aghast and appalled and willing to say so. Former RNC chairman Marc Racicot, for example, recently wrote a blistering open letter to current party chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, which he submitted to his hometown paper, the Billings Gazette.

Racicot takes Romney to task for the GOP's resolution censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — but then he says so much more. Here are some excerpts (including the wonderful word "piffle"). We cats PURR.

Dear Chairwoman McDaniel,

Based on my decades of engagement in Republican politics, my intuition tells me that you and the other members of the RNC will come to regret, if you don’t already, the passage of the RNC Resolution.

I believe you, and the members of the Committee, have substantially underestimated the Great Middle of America and what’s happening with all of those good and decent people from sea to shining sea. Made up of Democrats, Republicans and independents, the Great Middle is in the process of organizing itself with a higher goal, quietly but surely, not by express agreement or party affiliation, but by standards of decency, integrity, honor and faithfulness to the best interests of the Republic.

More important than ephemeral political calculations, in the political life of the United States there is no greater or higher loyalty as a citizen or an officeholder than a shared loyalty to the nation and the Constitution. Every citizen agrees to that premise as a condition of the social contract between the people and their government. Hence, loyalty to a political party or candidate never trumps allegiance to the Republic.

Although it is ever so neat and tidy to blame the defeat of the former president on the existence of decisive and widespread fraud, there is not even a scintilla of evidence, anywhere, to support such piffle. The former president didn’t experience defeat in 2020 because of fraud. The truth is quite the opposite.

My suggestion and request is that you lead the Committee through the process of withdrawing and dismissing the RNC Resolution. I urge the pursuit of this remedy with the understanding that we’re human, that politics is a competitive enterprise and that sometimes we make mistakes. But I also believe in such a situation the final measure of our character is whether we have the insight and courage to humbly and honestly correct them.