Aug.08

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

The GOP 25: A Rundown

On Friday, as the introduction to "This Week in Freudenfreude: When Republicans Do Good" we wrote:

We don't often get to talk about a Republican (or multiple Republicans) in this space. That is because the modern Republican Party is largely in the control of slimeballs who cater to their voters' basest instincts. Quick, can you name a plank of the GOP, as currently constituted, that involves making the world into a better place in some way? It's all about undoing one thing or another, or protecting turf of one sort or another (financial turf, religious turf, national turf/borders, etc.).

We got some pushback on that, although the pushback was largely focused on the use of the word "slimeball," which was deemed a cheap shot. Maybe so, but it's hard to think of another word that's substantially more dignified and yet conveys our meaning. In any event, in response to that pushback, we wrote this:

We thought carefully about that characterization before writing it, and while we are happy to share your critique with the readership, we stand by it. If you or anyone else can name, say, five Republicans who can be ranked among the 25 most important Republicans in the country right now (a mere 20%!), and who have not directly engaged in extremely undemocratic behavior, or enabled such behavior, or pointedly looked the other way while such behavior took place, then we are happy to reconsider our assessment once again. We will spot you Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), but you still need four more.

Even though we provided an e-mail link in the text, we heard from only one reader, and that reader was only able to name two people in addition to Romney (Larry Hogan and Asa Hutchinson). We are disinclined to include medium-state former governors in the Top 25 and, in any case, two is not four.

That said, the fact that Congress is not in session right now means the news cycle is a little slow. So, we thought we would examine our presumption a little more thoroughly. We now present a list of the 25 most important Republicans in the nation, in our view, along with examples of anti-democratic behavior, where applicable (and it usually is):

Having laid it all out, we think we still have the right of it, namely that the modern Republican Party, in contrast to past editions of that political organization, is in the thrall of a mostly undemocratic oligarchy. But did we err? Did we rank someone too high or too low? Omit someone we should have included? Give someone an unfair review? Offer a completely unreasonable assessment of the whole ball of wax? We welcome comments. (Z)