The Right-Cheek Ass Clown for May, 2021

As we pass the first hundred days of the Biden Administration, we see once again what a functioning government is capable of doing. We also see what a political party interested only in maintaining power is capable of doing. While President Biden chugs calmly along, working to beat the pandemic, restore the economy, and run a federal government that actually cares about ordinary Americans, the Republican Party, still fearful of Der Furor and his rabid followers, falls back on hatred, lies, voter suppression, and obstructionism in a desperate attempt to return the nation to an imagined Golden Age ruled by white men and devoted to the worship of guns, lower taxes, and the interests of big business and the wealthy.

For the first time in a long time, the choice of an Ass Clown awardee is a complete slam dunk, without the least question or hesitation in my mind. Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Right-Cheek Ass Clown for May, 2021

is presented to

The Republican Party

The GOP has received this award - either as a sole awardee or part of a joint presentation - ten times* before today, and has reached a level of stupendous ass clownery that would appall the Founders whom they so piously invoke when it suits them. The party has wiped its collective backside with the Constitution and abandoned all pretense of honor, decency, and democracy in the service of a disgraced former president unfit to hold any office of responsibility. 

As I write this, the Republican Party continues to refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election, insisting - without the least shred of evidence - that the election was fraudulent. Although virtually every lawsuit filed by GOP drones contesting election results has been withdrawn or dismissed by the courts for lack of evidence, the party continues to insist that it could only have lost the election because of vast cheating on the part of the Democrats. The former president went so far as to incite a deadly riot at the US Capitol that cost five lives and huge damage to the physical Capitol and the reputation of the United States as a nation governed by the rule of law ... and his party refuses to acknowledge or support any inquiry to assess responsibility for that horrendous, tragic, and thoroughly un-American event.

More than half a million Americans are dead and the economy was in ruins because the Republican Party, following the lead of its disgraceful head, refused to take the Covid-19 pandemic seriously. Now that a competent administration is in charge, the GOP continues its refusal to acknowledge the loss of the election, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell openly declaring that "One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration" ... an administration that is actually trying to do good things for the American people.

Across the country in states where it has the power, the Republican Party enacts restrictive voting laws - ostensibly in the name of "election integrity," but clearly designed to discourage voting by those Americans likely to vote for Democrats. 

Today's Republican Party stands for nothing other than gaining and maintaining power in an authoritarian, undemocratic government it will rule without possibility of challenge - not because of the popularity of its programs and actions, but by writing election laws and defining electoral districts in its favor. It did not even bother to publish a platform - a declaration of its goals and principles - for the 2020 election, simply saying that its platform was whatever Der Furor wanted.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, without the least doubt or question, the Right Cheek Ass Clown Award for May, 2021, is presented to the Republican Party ... and to those Americans who have drunk enough self-destructive Kool-Aid to follow it.

Have a good day, and seriously ask yourself which party actually has your best interests at heart. The answer should be obvious.

More thoughts tomorrow, when Cartoon Saturday returns.

Bilbo

* I keep track of the awards I've presented, and whether they are individual or shared. Since I began presenting Ass Clown Awards in 2011, they have been presented to the Republican Party/GOP as an organization 10 times (two of which were shared with the Democratic Party); they have been presented to individual Republican or conservative political or media figures 128 times. By contrast, I have presented the award to the Democratic Party as an organization twice (both times shared with the GOP), and to individual Democratic or liberal political for media figures eight times. From these figures, you might infer that I am harder on Republicans/conservatives than on Democrats/liberals ... this is probably true, but mostly because I am at heart a moderate (well, okay, slightly center-left) fellow, and I expect more from people who claim to espouse fundamental conservative principles rather than present-day Republican sewage.