ALL IN THE ARCHIE BUNKER FAMILY

 

©Wendell Griffen, 2023

As of today, the following persons have announced their candidacies for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in 2024.

·       Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina.

·       Governor Ron DeSantis from Florida.

·       Former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

·       Former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.

·       Former President Donald Trump from Florida.

Although he has not yet announced his candidacy, it is likely that former Vice President Mike Pence from Indiana will also seek the Republican Party nomination at some point in the foreseeable future.

These politicians will spend countless hours and millions of dollars between now and 2024 trying to persuade Republican voters that they differ from one another. They will travel across the nation, give speeches, publish books about themselves, and do the other things that characterize US presidential politics. News reporters will follow them and report what they say and do.

People who believe in freedom, truth, justice, and peace should not be fooled by them.

Senator Tim Scott voted to support Donald Trump’s policies 96% of the time during Trump’s presidency. After Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for holding up appropriated US aid to Ukraine in an effort to get the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden, Scott voted against convicting Trump. After Trump was impeached a second time for instigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection against the US Capitol in order to stay in office, Scott again voted against convicting Trump.

Scott obviously hopes that Republican primary voters will be impressed enough about his personal history of an impoverished childhood, “up from poverty” success story, likeable demeanor, and right-wing views to make him their vice-presidential nominee. If that happens, Scott will try to convince Black men to turn away from the Democratic Party – which depends on strong support from Black voters – to support the Republican presidential candidate even if that person is Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson, or Nikki Haley.

Scott and his Republican strategists probably think that authoritarian-minded Black men will join authoritarian-minded white men and women to out-vote socially conscious Black, Latino, Asian, and white voters to defeat President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris if he is the Republican vice-presidential candidate. That is why Tim Scott will parrot the words of Martin Luther King Jr., talk about his impoverished childhood, and deny that the United States is a society infested with racism as often as he can get people to listen to him.

Scott has never condemned Donald Trump’s despicable attempt to extort the president of Ukraine for a personal political “favor” in exchange for aid Trump was legally obligated to deliver but withheld. None of Scott’s flowery oratory excuses his refusal to condemn the lies Trump told and the people Trump incited to attack the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Scott’s stump speeches about the US being a fair-minded society do not change the truth about current and past US racist police practices, voter intimidation and suppression, and politically motivated racist behavior by white US political leaders across centuries.

Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, and Ron DeSantis can talk all they want about their experiences as governors of South Carolina, Arkansas, Indiana, and Florida, respectively. But like Tim Scott, they each refused to support a ban on the sale of the military-styled assault rifles to civilians that have been responsible for the deaths and severe injuries suffered by scores of men, women, and children in the US.

No matter how much Scott, Haley, Hutchinson, Pence, and DeSantis try to distance themselves from one another and Trump, they are, like Trump, sold out to gun merchants of carnage, hedge fund billionaires of corporate greed, and hateful faith, and other bigots who run the Republican Party.

Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, and Ron DeSantis share Donald Trump’s homophobic, transphobic, authoritarian, capitalist, and fascist world view. They supported Donald Trump to become president in 2016 knowing his history as a sexual predator, misogynist, racist, commercial cheat, and pathological liar. In that sense, Scott, Haley, Hutchinson, Pence, and DeSantis are not different from Trump. They are merely less notorious examples of Donald Trump’s hateful approach to life and public policy.

 In the All in the Family television sitcom, the lead character, played by Carroll O’Connor, was named Archie Bunker. Donald Trump is the most glaring example of Archie Bunker-like boisterous bigotry. No matter how Scott, Haley, Hutchinson, Pence, and DeSantis represent themselves, they each share Trump’s disdain for truth, justice, freedom, and peace. Their campaigns are being pitched to the same voting constituency that elected Trump in 2016.

All of them are in the same hateful “family.” Don't let them fool you.