Our senators on those Medicaid cuts (see last post)

From the Huffington Post:

Republican lawmakers sound antsy about cutting a program that benefits many of their own constituents. https://t.co/UMERdY2h1a

— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) February 22, 2025

From that article:

“Large cuts to Medicaid would hurt a lot of people in my state — and we voted overwhelmingly for President Trump,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in an interview with HuffPost this week.

Please note that Senator Capito has adopted Trump’s world view – that aid to states ought to be contingent upon how a state voted. (Senator, aren’t we all part of the United States, regardless of how we voted?) For Donald Trump, however, loyalty is not to our country but rather to him. Clearly, Capito, in mentioning how WV voted, obviously shares that point of view. And does our senator really think that Trump cares about the plight of West Virginians – especially since he won’t be facing any more elections? Senator, has the man ever demonstrated empathy toward any needy person? (The closest I’ve ever seen is fake sympathy not empathy.) Yeah, Shelley, do what you usually do when confronted with Trump’s cruelty: ignore it knowing that no West Virginia reporter will ever ask you about it.

And from our new senator, Jim Justice:

West Virginia’s junior senator, Jim Justice, a former Democrat-turned-Republican, said he doubted “those sweeping changes that will really hurt people” would actually happen. “Do I really believe that President Trump is going to do something that is really detrimental to millions of seniors? I think I don’t believe it. I don’t believe that’ll happen at all,” he said.

Really, Senator?

Congressman Riley Moore confirms it: it’s no longer the Republican Party, it’s the Trump Party

I’ve been calling it the Trump Party for a couple of years now and our newly-elected congressional representative, Riley Moore, recently confirmed it at the Conservative Political Action Commitee's (CPAC) recent conference:

Congressman @RileyMooreWV: "This party now is the party of Donald Trump. That is very clear. It's an America-First movement. That's where the Republican party is going. And we gotta make sure that we stay on that trajectory." pic.twitter.com/Fj0mj4Kxut

— CPAC (@CPAC) February 20, 2025

President Donald Trump: “A man who saves his nation violates no law.”

And here is Riley’s good buddy, Jack Prosobiec, at that same conference praising and then quoting Donald Trump’s call for lawbreaking -- “A man who saves his nation violates no law”:

Jack Posobiec told CPAC that Trump is not violating the Constitution because "Trump is the living embodiment of the American Constitution." pic.twitter.com/WiWwHXpZIZ

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) February 21, 2025

It should be remembered that Prosobiec, at last year’s CPAC conference, called for the overthrow of democracy. (I wrote about it here.)

So, after a month’s worth of the Trump administration’s attacks upon long-standing democratic institutions and procedures, matched with silence or outright support by what used to be called the Republican Party, Prosobiec’s year-old call for the end of democracy now seems prophetic rather than pathetic.

A personal note: I have been interested and sometimes involved in politics for most of my long adult life, and I have never been so worried about the future of our democracy. I lived through the Nixon years, for example, which featured several attacks upon democratic institutions. I don’t remember being very worried because the Republican Party of the 1970s never suggested that they would become the Nixon Party. The result: our democracy survived. Today, what used to be West Virginia’s Republican Party, and the national party, are no more; they’ve been replaced by a party that shows near total allegiance to a man who simply doesn’t believe in democracy. I hope we survive.