By Tomas Vera, Chair Communications Committee
Hypocrisy seems to be a cornerstone of GOP reasoning these days. Be it the price of gas, the murder of school children, the intrusion of government into our private lives, or a myriad of other issues, GOP candidates are serving as contortionists to justify their platform positions.
Gasoline
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the price of crude oil has gone up, causing a domino effect that is felt by consumers around the world, including right here in the USA. It has only been in the last few days that the price of gas has started to come down, giving working families a tiny breather as they struggle to pay for the cost of driving to work and running needed errands.
Not all the news regarding oil is bad, however, if you’re a multinational oil conglomerate. The higher price of crude has given large oil companies the cover they need to raise the retail price of gasoline to record levels. Like thieves in the night, they have worked to raise prices, allowing them to report record profits while consumers struggle to fill up their tanks.
On May 19, 2022, the House or Representatives passed the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act, mostly along party lines. The California GOP congressional delegation has been crying crocodile tears over gas prices for most of the year. You would reasonably expect them to support this bill. But they did not, because this bill would reduce profits for the corporate oil giants who pay top-dollar for votes from GOP members of congress.
GOP representatives tell us they hate the high gasoline prices, yet they vote to keep the high prices in place.
Sanctity of Life
This year has been devastating with regard to death on the streets due to firearm violence. So far this year (I find it horrendous that I need to use this as a qualifier), the school shooting at Uvalde, Texas has been the worst. A mentally deranged individual with ready access to weapons of war, was able to end twenty-one lives. That’s twenty-one people who should be walking among us today. But they can’t…because Texas GOP representatives have placed the value of gun ownership above that of human life. Why? Because the NRA, and its supporters, donate to GOP representatives. Those supporters have been duped into believing that “they” will be coming for their weapons.
GOP members like to use the phrase “sanctity of life” when discussing access to abortion. In many states, they have enacted laws that establish “personhood” at the moment of conception. They will tell you that they value life so much, that they feel compelled to support these absolutely ridiculous pieces of legislation.
But the sanctity of life ends once a child is born, it seems. When given the opportunity to support legislation to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals, they huddled under the recent SCOTUS decision, hailing the 2nd amendment’s “shall not be infringed” clause as absolute, and voted against bills that would provide actual support for living, breathing human beings.
Our GOP representatives consistently vote against programs and initiatives that would benefit their constituents. The claim that any benefits given to constituents are not “earned” and so should not be handed out. Yet representatives like Doug LaMalfa are more than happy to sidle to the public trough for their own personal benefit.
LaMalfa is a particularly egregious example of the “do as I say, not as I do” representative. He sits on committees that allow him to write legislation that benefits him personally. He uses loopholes in water law, to allow his corporate farm to take water intended to benefit family farms. He has voted to obscure reporting of the amount of benefits he receives. He profits while letting his constituents suffer. His hypocrisy is unrivaled.
Demonstrably erroneously
This summer SCOTUS released their decision in the Dobbs vs Jackson Womens’ Health Organization, effectively ending a woman’s right to an abortion. Justices who testified in support of prior decisions during their confirmations, were suddenly eager to toss precedent aside in favor of partisanship. Associate Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion was chilling:
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
With those words, Thomas made it clear that he expects the US Supreme Court to actively go after decisions regarding a right to contraception, right to be with someone of the same sex, and the right to marry whomever you wish. He intends to overturn these decisions, because these rights are not explicitly contained in the constitution. His jurisprudence has always sought to interpret the constitution as literally as possible.
The hypocrisy from Thomas is particularly astounding because the legal reasoning used in the cases he cites was also used in the Loving vs Virginia SCOTUS decision. That’s the decision that allowed inter-racial marriage to take place. Thomas is happy to overturn common sense decisions, so long as they don’t affect him, personally.
Someone should remind Thomas that in the original text of the constitution, he would not be allowed to vote, not allowed to marry his wife, and he would only count as 3/5th of a human being.
His is a typical GOP mindset: I got mine; screw you.
The height of hypocrisy
Thomas’ views may be the height of the hypocrisy coming from today’s GOP, but they’re not unique. GOP representatives are no longer coy about their hypocrisy. They openly make contradictory statements, cherry-pick facts and references, and count on the support of voters willing to trade away their own rights for the sake of a suspect partisan ideology. These supporters will gain absolutely no benefit from these decisions, nor from any legislation proposed by today’s GOP. Yet they continue to support that party out of an expectation that, somehow, our nation’s elite will provide benefits to the working poor they routinely exploit for profit.
That will never happen.