On February 12, 2022 Heather Cox Richardson’s column included these observations:

“The Fox News Channel is cheering on the so-called “Freedom Convoys” of disgruntled Canadians driving commercial trucks who have shut down Ottawa, Canada’s capital, as well as key border crossings…that have made it impossible for auto plants on both sides of the border to get the parts they need, and the resulting production cuts, as well as the idling of hundreds of millions of dollars in trade, are hurting the economies of both countries…According to Justin Ling in The Guardian, the convoys appear to have been organized by James Bauder, a conspiracy theorist who believes Covid-19 is a political scam and has endorsed the QAnon movement…On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Canadian Trucking Alliance told Rose White of MLive that many of the Freedom Convoy protesters “have no connection to the trucking industry and have a separate agenda beyond a disagreement over cross border vaccine requirements.” Facebook officials told NBC News today that fake accounts tied to content mills in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Romania, and several other countries have been pushing the convoy. Their disinformation is working; donations from the U.S. have flooded into accounts supporting the convoy protesters…Former president Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), and others have endorsed the convoy, and the Fox News Channel has talked about the convoy two and a half times as often as CNN and five times as often as MSNB…”

Frankly the Republican Party has been in destabilization mode at least since Barack Obama took the oath of office on January 28, 2009. That night 15 Republicans, including Bob Corker, met for four hours at the Caucus Room in Washington DC at the invitation of strategist Frank Lutz. During that meeting the group conspired to derail every proposal put forward by Obama to end the deep recession (GDP was minus -5.4%, with unemployment approaching 10%,) and curb the banking and homeownership crisis. The strategy was adopted by the entire Republican Party in Obama’s first term, eventually resulting in TIME Magazine publishing “The Party of No,” adapted from a book entitled The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era written by Michael Grunwald.

What began as a temporary program to regain control of Congress morphed into something more sinister during the Trump administration. In order to convince voters to line up against their own interests Republicans had to demonize Democratic programs to stabilize the economy and improve their lives. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) became ‘Obamacare,’ for instance, (My now-retired barber disliked Obamacare but sure was grateful for the Affordable Care Act, since he had an assortment of medical issues that made him otherwise uninsurable.) When Trump came into office, he made six attempts (like cutting subsidies to the insurance companies,) to sabotage the ACA. After 11 years of promises, Republicans were unable to deliver even a cogent outline of their ACA replacement. 

In 2016 the GOP released its party platform prior to the presidential primaries. It took positions on healthcare, foreign policy, ethics, immigration reform, climate, race, gender, and support for Ukraine. The only topic Trump took an interest in was Ukraine. As soon as he became the official candidate the platform was adjusted to be sympathetic to Russia. His four years in office would see the US backslide on every 2016 platform issue. For the 2020 campaign the GOP dusted it off. Once Trump lost, Mitch McConnell said he wouldn’t offer a GOP legislative agenda before the 2022 midterms.

While the GOP has no written platform, the playbook is abundantly clear to see; destabilization. Why? Destabilization is their pathway to power. As the multi-pronged strategy to overturn the presidential election has shown, (questioning the legality of mail-in voting; 60+ lawsuits; fake investigations; Stop the Steal; fake electors; state and local pressure campaigns, the attack on the Capitol,) there is a Republican strategy in place to destabilize government at every level, including our state, county, and local politics. The tactics are distraction and fiction. Underlying Cruz and Paul’s support for Canadian truckers is the fantasy that mask mandates and vaccines don’t work. This fantasy plays out alongside the climate change hoax, normalizing of mass shootings, tax cuts that never stimulate the economy, the war on women, racial gerrymandering, and the insistence that the Founding Fathers never envisioned America as a democracy. The goal is suspension of the belief in facts, while distracting the public’s focus from important issues.

As we move closer to the elections of 2022 it’s time to help Democratic candidates take control of the conversation and steer it away from secret computer breaches and transgender bathrooms.