The temper tantrum party

It's fall, the leaves are turning, and there is a whiff of fascism in the air

Republicans think they own the ball, and the stadium, and the league, and the right to make the rules, and they’re going to throw a fit if they don’t get to score their touchdown and win.

Everyone got together and sat down and agreed about how democracy works a long time ago:  who gets to make the rules and what you have to do if you want to win in the game of politics.  You run for office, and you get people to vote for you, and if you get the most votes, you win.  You’ve scored your goal.  If your party gets the most votes, you get to make the rules until the next election when the game is played all over again.

That’s the way it worked for more than two centuries:  the parties tussled through elections, but when they were over, and one party won and the other didn’t, or when there was a split decision, as in one party wins the White House and the other party wins the Congress, they still managed to sit down and make deals and get things done – like giving women the vote, or making a New Deal to end the Great Depression, or winning World War II, or passing the Civil Rights laws, or even getting us into and out of a few mistaken wars.

But no longer. That’s not the way the Republican Party wants to play the game anymore.  They have made a unilateral change in the rules they will play by:  only one team is allowed to win, the Republican team, and if the other team somehow manages to prevail, they won’t recognize their victory, and they will not only take their ball and go home, they will burn down the stadium.