ESCAPE VELOCITY

The Republican campaign to accelerate beyond the reach of democratic accountability before the nation can respond.

The Republican Party is pursuing a rapid, multi-front strategy to entrench political power before an increasingly alarmed public can organize an effective electoral response.

On an almost daily basis one struggles to evaluate two combative movements within our country.  The contest ranges across all regions of the Nation.  Our two contestants are the partisan GOP majority of the government and the other is the vast and diverse realm of opinion tribunes and citizenry who are increasingly vocal and are contributing significantly to the richness of public discourse.  They are battling for the prize of the republic.  Each is racing to reach a position of dominance in the mid-term elections and beyond.  The eventual speed the peoples’ tribunes can ramp up to in the next several months and years is unknown; but the GOP, home of the partisans, is picking up speed, opening new fronts and moving out smartly with a suite of both known and unknown, fair and illegitimate weaponry.

They are trying to close out the pace of our citizens tribunes by achieving escape velocity — make it impossible for the rest of the awakening nation to catch up.

Within the national revival I see and hear from across the civil spectrum of podcasts, mainline and auxiliary media, authors and political sentinels, a flurry of exhortations to voters warning them of a metastasizing autonomy, imbalanced tax policy, reductions to America’s and the globe’s vulnerable populations, corporate greed and an oligarchical progression of ever elaborating and unchecked innovations.  They make up a credible and impactful storm of warnings and wake-up calls to coming heavy weather.

From the GOP partisans, you are witnessing a carefully calibrated, multi-front attempt to seize governing power through legitimate as well as questionable if not blatantly illicit means.  The array of weapons is substantial.  Under Oval Office direction federal and state Republican administrations have opened a gerrymandering war.  Democratic states responded in kind but the number of Republican states is far greater.  Among the legal weaponry there is Presidential visibility, fund-raising, digital campaigning, ground organization, issue emphasis, capitalizing on an ecosystem and a variety of other legal tools.  But other highly questionable practices are at work as well: aggressive and intrusive voter rolls manipulation, vindictive DOJ political prosecutions, recent and supportive Supreme Court rulings such as lifting constraints on the huge wealth of Super PACs, the use of misinformation and ad hominem attacks in targeted digital advertising, often using malicious AI imagery, ungrounded challenges to voter eligibility, outright efforts at voter suppression, the threat of the invocation of the Insurrection Act, and an abject failure to enforce Hatch Act restrictions, among so many others.

These measures illustrate factual forward movement from the government that often yields strengthened success among the supportive populations of the President, often through the misuse of its resources and resulting in broadening its grip on the nation.  On the other side — for our purposes here we will call it the “we the people” side — there is an expanding awareness of a gathering threat.  The road to Damascus is long and our political epiphany has been slow to take shape.  It is doing so now, but still ploddingly.  It is infused with a lot of hope but as yet our ability to to project what its ultimate size will be is limited, and how loud its exhortations will be, or what the total impact the collective’s potential influence on elections will amount to unclear.  We have a very fuzzy picture of the punch and reach it is capable of generating in the coming months.

With so much of the “we the people” picture unfinished, the GOP strategy is clearer and easier to measure.  It is in the hands of a vicious president with a character utterly devoid of scruples or principles, and who has the support of a Republican caucus and associated machinery that is an unambiguous blend of active supporters, sedated seat-warmers, sufferers of decision paralysis, limpid go-alongs, and a smattering of tired quitters who make for the exits mouthing now safe criticisms.  The citizen sentinels can do better against these men and women.  We must up our game.