This week’s Democrat National Convention (DNC) offers a clarifying moment in modern U.S. politics — and not for the reason people may think.
After just one day, Democrats have produced enough crazy to fill a swimming pool ten times over. From offering free abortions and vasectomies to attendees, to bragging about using lawfare to target their political opponents, the list of left-wing extremism coming out of the convention is getting longer by the second.
And what, you may ask, are Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans doing this week to counter-message this insanity?
Virtually nothing.
While Democrats espouse their radicalism to the country, Republicans couldn’t even be bothered to stay in Washington, D.C. Most representatives are currently back in their districts as part of Congress’s annual “August recess” and won’t return to town until Sept. 9.
If Johnson and GOP leadership actually cared about providing a contrasting vision from that produced by Democrats, they’d put their majority to good use. This means spending the August recess holding daily congressional hearings that underscore the severity of the ongoing border invasion and making the case to the American public on why government funding should be withheld next month unless the Biden-Harris administration fixes the crisis.
But Republicans aren’t doing any of that.
When they’re not issuing performative outrage tweets about what Democrats are saying at the DNC, they’re rushing to the nearest Fox News camera to warn viewers about how dangerous the modern left has become.
“Vote Republican to save America!” says the House GOP that’s funded a myriad of Democrat priorities since winning the majority nearly two years ago.
The stark reality is that Johnson and most Republicans don’t give a damn about their voters or the Democrat-made crises wrecking the country and fear no repercussions for abetting Democrats’ extremism. And they have little reason to.
Despite their professed dissatisfaction with Congress, most Republican electors often don’t bother showing up to vote in GOP primaries. In many cases, majorities of the same constituencies who claim to disapprove of their congressional leaders vote to re-elect those same people — oftentimes with the encouragement of Donald Trump.
So, where does this leave us?
If Republicans know their voters are unlikely to punish them for their failures, they have no incentive to abide by their wishes and fight Democrats on the issues that matter, when they matter. Similarly, Democrats have no incentive to moderate their positions on any given subject. They know that Republicans are not a legitimate political opposition and will acquiesce on whatever major policy battle arises.
Even if they lose an election here or there, Democrats recognize that Republicans lack the willpower to overturn tyrannical policies implemented during their time in power, and that voters will put them in charge once the electoral pendulum swings back in their favor. They also have the added bonus of a hyper-politicized federal bureaucracy that advances leftist causes even when a Democrat isn’t in the White House.
What we’re seeing at the DNC this week is an open acknowledgment of this paradigm. Democrats realize they can expose the most unhinged elements of their worldview to the American populace, and vapid Republicans will produce no long-term consequences for it. Their willingness to play the long game has allowed them to push America further away from the constitutional framework created by the Founders into an increasingly unrecognizable dystopia.
There’s only one political force playing to win in America, and it sure as heck isn’t the Republican Party.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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