Just cowards, enablers, and fascists in matching flag pins.
The Republican Party is a hollow, decrepit husk. It is not a political movement. It is not a governing apparatus. It is not even an ideology with any internal coherence. It is a decaying vessel for a set of impulses: authoritarianism, greed, cruelty, nostalgia, and fear. And now, with the party marching in lockstep behind a man openly exploring how to violate the Constitution to seize a third term in office, it is fair to say the Republican Party has collapsed into something far worse than irrelevance. It is a clear and present danger to democracy.
Donald Trump says he is not joking about a third term. His attorney has reportedly studied legal loopholes for how he might pull it off. Conservative think tanks like Heritage have provided blueprints for an administrative coup. Media allies float the idea like it's cocktail-party fodder. A large portion of the party base is not only unbothered, but thrilled. Let that sink in. The 22nd Amendment is clear. It is as clear as law gets: two terms and out. This is not a gray area. And yet, the GOP treats this not as a red line, but a red carpet.
The principled conservatives are all but extinct. They have been replaced by sycophants, opportunists, and media carnivores addicted to outrage clicks. They do not even pretend to care about restraint or integrity. They chase the man with the biggest spotlight, and right now, that man is telling them he intends to stay in power illegally.
And what do they do? They laugh. They obfuscate. They change the subject. Or worse, they say they hope he sticks around for 20 more years. The Republican Party has become a stage set, propped up by billionaires, infotainment, and a rotted base ideology that sees power as the only value that matters. Not freedom. Not rule of law. Not even gutter patriotism. Just power. And if democracy gets in the way of that power, well—then democracy is the problem.
When future historians write about the collapse of American democratic norms, they won't have to dig far. The receipts are in plain sight. Trump tried to overthrow an election and was impeached for it. He called for the Constitution to be "terminated" to reinstall himself. Now he says out loud that he might want a third term, and what was once unthinkable is slowly being normalized. This is how authoritarianism works: through with the erosion of resistance. The normalization of lawbreaking. The shrinking of outrage. The silence of institutions that once would have, should have stood in the way.
The whole world is living through that erosion right now. And the Republican Party is not the victim of it. It is the mechanism. The idea that this party still somehow represents traditional American values is a sick joke. It represents the institutionalization of contempt—for facts, for laws, for the very concept of a shared civic reality.
There are no "good Republicans" left in power. There are enablers and there are cowards. There are those who dream of the Supreme Court blessing a legal fiction to let Trump run again. There are those who openly call for the administrative state to be torn down and replaced with one-man rule. And then there are those who know this is madness but lack the spine to do anything but murmur about it off the record. This is not a party in disarray. This is a party complicit.
The Constitution is not a suggestion. And anyone who claims to care about it should be screaming from the rooftops that this third-term talk is authoritarian poison. But of course, screaming is impolite. So the press keeps treating this as entertainment. The donors keep cutting checks. And the Democrats keep hoping voters will save them again. But what if they don't?
The idea that democracy always wins is a myth sold by history textbooks. In truth, democracy only survives when people are willing to fight for it. And right now, one major party has decided it's not worth fighting for. One major party is actively trying to break it. One major party is looking at a man who has announced he might ignore the Constitution and saying, "Yeah, okay."
That party is not just a joke. It's not just broken. It's not just extreme. It is unfit for power, unfit for leadership, and unfit for oxygen. The Republican Party is an embarrassment to its own history, a menace to its own country, and a willing accomplice in the unraveling of a system it once helped build.
It will not change on its own. It will not snap out of this. It must be rejected. Loudly. Repeatedly. At every level. Because what they are playing with is not strategy. It is not rhetoric. It is not some theoretical civics debate. It is the future of American democracy. And they are burning it to the ground.
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