"Real" Democrats

Since Pennsylvania's special election for a seat vacated by Tim Murphy -- who resigned after it came to light he demanded his mistress have an abortion -- Republicans have been trying to paint the humiliating loss as a win.

Their claim is that the winner, Conor Lamb, isn't a "real" Democrat because he is pro-life, pro-gun and doesn't like Nancy Pelosi.

Let's take these claims one at a time.

Lamb, a Roman Catholic, considers himself "pro-life" because he personally opposes abortion, but he thinks that women should be able to choose for themselves. I'm basically in that same camp: even though we never wanted kids, if my wife had become pregnant I wouldn't have wanted her to have an abortion. Unless she wanted to, or the fetus tested positive for serious birth defects, or if the pregnancy would harm her health.

Most Republicans who consider themselves "pro-life" are actually just anti-abortion, which is really code for denying women control over their own bodies. As Tim Murphy showed, Republicans are all for abortion when it's convenient for them.

But to say that Republicans are pro-life is a joke. Republicans are all for the death penalty. They think people should be able to buy guns and shoot people on the street. They heartily endorse George Zimmerman's murder of Trayvon Martin. How very pro-life of them.

When Trump was in Pennsylvania ostensibly campaigning for the Rick Saccone, the Republican candidate, he proposed the death penalty for drug dealers. I can't find anything describing Lamb's stance on the death penalty, but the Catholic Church is very much opposed to it, and that's where Lamb takes his cues on moral issues. Trump is now taking his cues from a murderous dictator in the Philippines who has had thousands of people killed without trial. How very fascist of him.

On guns, Lamb says that we don't need new laws, we just need to have better background checks. He also said he's open to other measures, but wants to start on issues that have broad agreement. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the NRA's guns everywhere-all-the-time stance. It sounds like he will vote for reasonable limits on firearms if they are brought before the House, which is exactly what the vast majority of Americans want.

And Nancy Pelosi? You don't have to support Nancy Pelosi, the senior Democrat in the House, to be a real Democrat. She's too old, too easily ridiculed, and not the best spokeswoman for the Democratic Party. I think we would be served better by someone younger, who connects with more Americans and isn't the punch line to every Republican joke.

Saying that Nancy Pelosi's time has passed isn't disloyalty, it's acknowledging reality.

And if you want to talk disloyalty, just look at the behavior of Republicans over the past several years with respect to their House leaders.

How many Republicans wanted the head of fellow Republican House Speaker John on a pike? Boehner was forced out of office by angry conservative Tea Party Republicans for not being a big enough dickhead.

How many Republicans right now, today, want the head of Paul Ryan -- the current speaker of the House -- on a pike? Many of them have never forgiven Ryan for refusing to defend Trump's disgusting behavior during the 2016 election. As recently as last October they were writing political obituaries for Ryan.

Real Democrats represent the people of the districts that elect them. Real Republicans consistently represent the Republican party line, which is dictated by the moneyed interests of corporate America.

Conor Lamb represents a right-of-center district in Pennsylvania, so that's how he rolls. Pelosi represents a liberal district in California, so that's how she rolls. Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator, represents the centrist views of most Minnesotans. So that's how she rolls.

Democrats from different parts of the country will have different interests because their constituents do, so it's natural that they won't all agree on everything. But they'll work together to find a solution that won't give everyone exactly what they want, but everyone can live with.

That's how democracy is supposed to work.

Republicans, on the other hand, all back Donald Trump and his mo-money tax cuts for oil barons and Wall Street bankers. They back the dismantling of the EPA, allowing the fossil fuel industry to pump more poisons into our air and water. They want to sell off the national parks to mining interests. They want to eliminate Dodd-Frank so Wall Street can repeat the Great Depression of 2008. They want to take away health care for all Americans and destroy the public school system.

Some of them, like my Republican representative, Eric Paulsen, aren't bombastic in their support for Trump's outrageous policies, but they quietly vote for Trump's agenda every time.

The Democratic Party represents all of America, while the Republican Party represents a tiny sliver of the elites. Republicans seem to be so hung up on the idea of duty to party that they'll blindly follow Donald Trump into an authoritarian nightmare, because for them "loyalty" is more important than doing the right thing.

But, as we've seen, Donald Trump is loyal to no one. He constantly insults and stabs his allies in the back. He is immoral, selfish and narcissistic. He lies constantly, and then brags about lying.

From this we can see that Republican loyalty isn't real loyalty, it's fear. Republicans are just knuckling under to bullies -- Trump, campaign contributors, oil barons, Wall Street bankers -- because they're too cowardly to do the right thing for the people they're supposed to represent.