Two Party Opera by Brian Carroll for February 17, 2021

It’s not just the ghost of Nixon that is coming to that conclusion, it’s every Republican with presidential ambition.. The party long ago cast out any Republicans with any sense of actual conservative values.

Now McConnell sits atop the remnants of the old guard, itself eviscerated by the countless Tea Party purges and is preparing for the fight of his life against Trump and his minions, still claiming to be a kind of Mar-a-lardo tin horn dictatorship and capable of threatening Republicans in primary elections across rural America.

Waiting in the wings are a rogue’s gallery of Qanon conspirators and fascist usurpers who are just waiting for whatever comes next. We have four very short years to tamp down the current pandemic, rebuild our economy and reform our electoral system, and prepare our infrastructure for global competition and climate change.. Failing in these tasks means the ghosts of Nixon and worse demagogues than Trump will be unleashed in a two party system that now has one party openly advocating authoritarianism.. democracy will not survive that.

It’s a whole new generation of despicable rong-wingers. They have completely given up any semblance of doing the right (correct) thing for the nation. The ONLY thing that matters is winning, and by “winning” they mean the primaries in red states… and perpetuation of the power of the obscenely rich for whom they toady.

The “Republicans” — clearly infiltrated by an extremist anti-democracy movement — are working to destroy our constitutional quasi-democratic republic from inside, by using all the loopholes they can. By packing the courts, and making the use of states’ rights to legally gerrymander, legally purge registration lists, legally limit the number of polling places, legally limit the hours of access, legally use unique ballots to make certification more of a challenge, and legally require photo IDs, and many other inconveniences to deter the Democratic voters from reaching the polls.

This is an attempt to beat the clock as, after gen-x, support by the increasingly diverse, highly educated voters drops off sharply among members of the Millennial and Gen-Z cohorts who vote. There was some support for the “Republicans” among Gen-Z until the pandemic showed their inability to lead, (as does the failure to repair the electrical grid infrastructure to accommodate a cold winter in Texas). Packed courts, QAnon conspiracy theories, and propaganda/disinformation from Fox, Newsmax, OAN, etc are their only hope against the younger generations that see the entitled “Republicans” as failing the American dream. The Millennials are the first generation that is not as well off as their parents were at the same age even though they have to work much harder than their parents did.

I see this racist/pseudo-religious authoritarian movement as a desperate last attempt to turn America into a 3rd world dictatorship with a “strong” leader.

That’s why they’re called “the good old days,” Dick. Somewhere between you and us, we lost our sense of shame.

Even with all his faults, Nixon cared more about the nation when the chips were down. Trump and the GQP care nothing about it.

You gotta be pretty low to make Nixon look good.

King Richard the Nix HAS to be relieved that he is no longer the WORST President in the History of the United States. It took about 40 years, but The Tangerine TRAITOR finally took away that crown!

Excellent cartoon, as always. Thanks.

Just shows how rotten the Republican party of psychopaths is and always has been.

Damn! Nixon’s transgressions seem pretty tame compared to EXPRESIDENT Trump.

Old Dick’s ghost must be raging in hell right now, realizing that he wouldn’t have had to resign at all if he’d had GOP senators as sycophantic and slavishly loyal as the one’s Trump enjoyed.

Nixon’s GOP is not today’s Republican Party.

Back in Nixon’s time, Republicans still had ethics and spines… sadly, not so true today…

Well, he did say “I am not a crook” publicly.

It’s what we’re left with when some of us have no shame.

thanks Brian. We’ve been overdue for a visit from our favorite former president.

Warren Harding’s papers are kept from the public by his family until one hundred years after his death. While Nixon’s recordings are on the internet available to anyone, Harding’s not yet dead enough.