Those who regularly return to the American Notebook already know that I have wanted the Republican Party to clean up its troops for quite some time.
Ridding a political formation of its harmful elements is not easy, especially when the electoral deadlines are jostling. Pale copies or emulators of Donald Trump, elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Greene shamelessly feed misinformation and stir up passions in a context of polarization where matches should certainly not be given to those who carry cans of gasoline. .
Un divorce national
In a tweet that has been circulating a lot since yesterday, the representative from Georgia talked about the need to separate the red states from the blue states. Shaking like so many others the woke scarecrow that would plague democratic states, she envisages nothing less than a “national divorce”.
As much from the most progressive elected officials as from the craziest Trumpists, I have read or heard many things that have confused me in recent years. But that an elected official propose this “divorce”, on the very day when American presidents are honored (Presidents’s day), marks a radicalization already perceptible during the contestation of the results of the 2020 election and the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Clearly, the far-right muse needs some history lessons and a crash course in how her country’s political institutions work. We can understand that it pays strategically to behave like a demagogue and to exploit the anger and hatred of certain voters, but here we are reaching the limits of the exercise.
The “national divorce” that took place between 1861 and 1865 should serve as a reminder of the dangers and horrors of this possible separation of states. We are not yet at the point of referring directly to violent combat or the destruction of certain regions, but we know enough to avoid evoking such memories.
Not only is Taylor Greene’s tweet dangerous and irresponsible from an elected official, but it must be remembered that in a necessary compromise to win the title of Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy granted his colleague within two committees, including that of National Security.
We must strongly condemn
In doing my review of the American media on Tuesday, I expected that elected officials, regardless of their political affiliation, would agree to reject the proposal. It goes without saying that I was not surprised by the wrathful tone of the Democrats, the opportunity was too good to politically recover such a blunder.
If the Democratic condemnation is strong, I am still looking for a coherent reaction from the Republican Party. There is indeed a declaration by Liz Cheney, banished from her political formation, and that of the governor of Utah Spencer Cox who attached the qualifier “diabolical” about Taylor Greene, but nothing unanimous within the GOP . The party is there in 2023?
