The Ass Clown of the Year for 2023

Happy New Year!

The people ... or, at least, those people motivated to vote ... have spoken! After two weeks of my whining exhortation, your voices have been heard, your votes counted, and the decision made! 

Seventeen individuals or groups received at least one vote in this year's campaign; following a last-minute surge in voting, here's the countdown to the big announcement:

In Fifth Place, with 292 votes: Texas Governor Greg Abbott;

In Fourth Place, with 412 votes: the MAGAts;

In Third Place, with 500 votes: Rudy Giuliani;

In Second Place, with 691 votes: Moms for Liberty;

and now, the Big Reveal - 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, it gives me no particular pleasure to announce that the award for

The 2023 Ass Clown of the Year

and its accompanying tinfoil and toilet paper crown

are presented to, with a total of 719 votes,

The Republican Party

I can sum up today's deluded, increasingly fascist-minded GOP no better than did conservative writers Thomas E. Mann and Norm Ornstein, writing almost twelve years ago in their opinion article titled "Let's Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem" -

“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

Since that time, and particularly since the resounding electoral defeat of Der Furor in 2020 which they still refuse to acknowledge, the GOP has lurched from one self-inflicted crisis to another, stocking its bench with characters who are at best unserious and at worst, demonstrably crazy. It has become and remains a party which, in the words of Michael Gerson, "[lacks] a moral and intellectual gag reflex." 

Having seized a tiny majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, the GOP used its leadership not to improve the lot of the average American, but to attempt to avenge the wounded ego of its supreme leader, Der Furor. It has presided (after a dreadfully comical search for a Speaker) over the least productive Congress in the history of the nation, as judged by the amount of legislation actually enacted into law. It has wasted time and energy in a completely evidence-free attempt to impeach President Biden over the imagined crimes of an imagined "Biden Crime Family" while ignoring the mountains of evidence of wrongdoing by Der Furor and his family. 

In spite of the clearly evident successes of Democratic policies, Republicans at all levels deny the evidence and rely on volume of angry noise to deflect attention from the historical failure of their own policies. 

Unable to win elections on the merits of their policies, the GOP relies on the heavy gerrymandering of Congressional districts and the imposition of laws ostensibly meant to enhance "election integrity," but in fact clearly designed to disenfranchise those likely to vote against it.

A party that one prided itself on policies to make the United States a bulwark and leader against authoritarian foes now happily embraces authoritarian rulers such as Russia's Vladimir Putin and Hungary's Victor Orban. 

Philosopher Eric Hoffer, writing in his classic book "The True Believer," observed that political, religious, and social mass movements needed unifying agents to help ensure their success, and today's GOP has embraced what Hoffer called "the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents" - hatred. Lacking evidence of any successes of its own and a comprehensive program to achieve its goals, today's Republican party relies on stoking in its adherents hatred of its opponents. The opposition is characterized as "vermin," and its legitimate concerns and issues disregarded as "poison." Truth and evidence are never required, only mindless hatred.

I lost all respect for the GOP years ago, when I left the party in disgust over the policies and actions of the George W. Bush administration. Since then, things have only become worse.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Readers, I am glad to announce that so many of you also see the obvious danger to the nation posed by an increasingly unhinged Republican Party, and voted to recognize the party as the 2023 Ass Clown of the Year.

Now, let's make sure that the GOP never again gains control of the levers of power it is so eager to abuse.

Have a good day and a happy, healthy, safe, and sane new year. As legal affairs commentator Joyce Vance is fond of saying, "we're all in this together."

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

P.S. - for those of you interested in the full results of the voting, here's a copy of my voting results spreadsheet ...