Eric Falk: Republicans all in for Trump

It is tragic to see that one of the Western world’s heretofore great political parties, the Republican Party, has gone “all in for Trump,” including Pennsylvania’s Republicans. In doing so, it has made a profound moral choice, antithetical to its founding principles.

The Republican Party was established on the principle of opposing slavery. It also stood against the political philosophy underlying slavery — a political philosophy of minority rule, despotism and violence against those the minority deemed “unworthy” of the rights in the Declaration of Independence.

It is said that the Founding Fathers were worried that parties would destroy the infant republic. Yet as some historians have noted, the rise of parties in the 1790s may have helped the republic to develop, channeling political disagreement away from the threat of violence and to the ballot box.

When our nation was founded, the peaceful transfer of political power was an untested idea. Many observers at that time thought such a transfer could only happen violently, given that the French Revolution was unfolding for all to see.

America was the first nation to demonstrate that the transfer of power could occur peacefully, without violence; the rise of parties did play a role in that, promoting the idea that we all have a shared civic responsibility, despite our policy differences, and that the responsibility of citizenship in this republic is what binds us all together.

The events of the past three months, particularly the chain of lies and violent rhetoric that led to the attack on Congress and deaths of Jan. 6, the refusal to publicly rebuke those who encouraged those lies and that rhetoric, and the rise of fantasy conspiracymongers overtaking the modern Republican Party, all reveal what this party has become.

A once great political party that stood for the principles the founders held now stands against those very principles. It no longer stands for the peaceful transfer of power; it stands against facts and reality; it believes in delegitimizing and dehumanizing those who do not share its “facts”; it embraces the rhetoric of violence and looks away when that embrace results in acts of violence.

All of this leads towards one inexorable conclusion — the Republican Party in 2021 no longer accepts the very idea of a republic, rejects the notion of responsible civic obligations and has embraced what can only be called American fascism, as noted by conservative commentator, and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, Michael Gerson.

The Republican Party in 2021 will be judged by the moral choice it has made. The eyes of all people, indeed of history, are upon it. That this has happened to the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan is a great tragedy for America.

Eric Falk is member of the Westmoreland County Democratic Committee and chair of the Norwin Area Democrats.