When readers consider Editorials we post on this site – particularly on issues of national or statewide importance – we ask you to use the following as a reference guide when considering how any issue may be affected by the Republican Party and their current behavior.

Regardless of anyone coming to the defense of a “few good apples” and the “innoncent, unelected everyday Republicans who would deny they think this way,” we consider the following bullet points to be facts about today’s Republican Party:

• It is a party of cruelty, regressive public and social policy which embraces white grievance and culture war on a variety of issues related to women’s, LGTBQIA+, BIPOC, and other civil rights issues.
  • In fact, it fully believes in the subjugation or at very least second class citizenry of women and believes people born outside heteronormative lines are second class citizens
  • Its appointed SCOTUS justices’ reversal of Roe v. Wade would represent a mere beginning. Their conservative justices may also throw gay marriage, interracial marriage, and contraception back to the states to relitigate

• Its elected leaders and their powerful cohorts actively practice or promote racism, and in many states they control, are actively seeking to prevent a full, unsanitized education of U.S. history. They actively wish to prevent future leaders from confronting some of our nation’s greatest sins and fail to accept or understand the reasons why we must strive for a more perfect union
  • The Republican Party literally doesn’t want our young people learning of the genocide and subjugation of Native Americans or the immorality and brutality of slavery. It seems in denial of the fact that many of our forefathers owned other human beings. Specifically, Black people who were brought to this continent by force.

• It has embraced fascism and rejected any notion of preserving democracy – certainly not any fair or competitive one anyway. The Republican Party proudly, and publicly, works to gerrymander legislative districts at all levels of government to clear Republican advantage and has actively passed laws at the state level that make it harder or improbable for anyone to vote who is neither white nor living in known Republican areas. It has legally enabled several state officials to reverse the course of election outcomes if they simply do not like the result
  • The idea that the Republican Party will not be satisfied until every election is decided with a victorious Republican outcome is very real and should not be considered an exaggeration. They fully want to establish an autocratic, theocratic government led by minority rule
  • They have removed themselves as members of the Commission on Presidential Debates because they are no longer interested in their presidential candidates having to compete with their ideas to a national audience
  • It and its right-wing media allies continue to push the notion that the safest, fairest, and the most participatory national election in U.S. history was corrupted and stolen from their dangerous leader, Donald Trump. But they see no inconsistency or irony in the fact that the same voters participating in the Presidential elections provided their party gains at the congressional level and in state contests
• It is against science, instead opting for the pseudo-science of the loudest and wealthiest quack physicians and fringe scientists who are able to gain mass attention. It is the only political party in the world known to deny climate change and resist a future free of reliance on fossil fuels. It actively fights efforts at environmental protection and climate resiliency
• It cares nothing of the national debt for which it pretends to be terrified, nor does it believe defense spending “counts” in any way toward the annual deficit or even the annual budget itself.
• Its only spending priorities are the military and law enforcement, and has clearly stated it does not want either to be more sensitive, educated, or humane in the execution of their duties; it does not believe in rehabilitation
• It will not rest until every home in America is armed to the teeth with assault weapons that no ordinary citizens should handle, and which should actually be outlawed
• It lives in complete denial that there are dangerous and historical levels of income inequality in this country. It will not entertain any suggestion that it bears responsibility for fostering income inequality; The Republican Party blame low-income and poor Americans for their own situation. They are not only opposed to raising the minimum wage, but also don’t think one should even exist
• It will only readily accept white, English-speaking immigrants to this country. If the immigrants aren’t English-speaking, they sure as Hell better be white
• It has no plans for solving really any issue confronting the country; it possesses no agenda other than to try and bully left-leaning people, or “own” them whatever that means. It jumps from one culture war to the next. It has no bright ideas for how things might be done better to help solve the nation’s ills. Its elected leaders literally “anti-govern” or “un-govern” when in office
• It is against knowledge or increasing one’s knowledge, as they are fully aware the more educated and enlightened persons become, the more those persons will be able to identify its whole host of regressive ideas as wrong and that social progress must be made. It completely considers the United States a finished product that does not need improvement
• Many of its members practice a warped, fake “Christianity” obsessed with fighting LGTBQIA+ persons and rendering women powerless over their reproductive freedom. These so-called Christians care very little for the actual teachings of Jesus Christ or helping the less fortunate. In fact, they really seem to just care about creating more of their style of “Christians”
• One in four — 25 percent! — of its registered voters believe in crazy, dangerous, and violent conspiracy theories including Q-anon
• It condones political violence against those who disagree with it

Some will read the facts above and think they are outliers, or a completely exaggerated picture representing only the most fringe elements of the Republican Party. But the philosophy outlined above is exactly what is represented by those that have taken over the Republican Party, including its deranged, dangerous, and criminal leader who continuously lies and encourages political violence. And remember, every elected Republican has ascended to office through the vote of those supposedly “innocent, non-Trump supporting” Republican voters.

Those “few good apples” better get to work.