True Skill versus Hacking

Many of us have realized that the Republican Party has begun to fragment over the last few years.  (So have the Democrats, but the Dems, at least, are more in tune with the conventional workings of government, whereas the Republicans are not.)

Let us first assume that the mechanics of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the White House, and the ways they work together to govern the country has worked, and will continue to work in the near future.  Whether it does or doesn't is a discussion for smarter minds than mine.  Then it behooves those who are sent to Washington to learn how to do this to the best of their ability.  However, in many areas of life, we see that the newer waves of people apprenticed to work in any area are simply content to learn certain tricks that work, and simply employ them repeatedly.

Mitch McConnell, for example, has learned to drag things out as long as possible, when a Congressional Democratic majority is in power, to (1) not address any legislation that has been sent up from the House, and (2) not consider any supreme court justices that a Democrat President nominates.

This pattern has been extended as follows.  If any Democrat President tries to do anything in a bipartisan way, the Republicans pretend to try to accommodate him or her.  After months of negotiating have delayed the proceedings, they then stop negotiating and vote against the (successfully weakened) legislation.

The Democrats, however, are usually accomplished lawyers, who usually argue their cases in good faith, and do not try to subvert the dominant paradigm, as the saying goes.  The Republicans know this, therefore they try very hard to break the rules.  Whenever they discover a 'charismatic' leader in their midst (though it's hard to think of Donald Trump in terms of charisma; he's more of a showman, a sort of Liberace who can't play the piano), and who does not stand for the usual procedures of Washington, they make the best of it, and encourage him to wreak havoc in Washington, to the extent of subverting the Justice Department, the Immigration Service, and many other institutions that are not intended to be interfered with by political people.

So, as fewer and fewer strong, knowledgeable and skillful Republicans are elected to national office, and the party is left in the hands of hacks, their strategies will drift ever increasingly towards obstructionism, and such things as voter suppression, and playing with the Supreme Court, and wild litigation.

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