Republicans' Moment of Choosing
The GOP can be the party with integrity and a relentless commitment to telling hard truths, or we can be the party that gives in to fanciful lies.
Difficult problems require serious solutions, of course, but they also require a willingness to tell hard truths.
And neither party in Washington is willing to tell the truth to the American people these days.Democrats, for their part, have spent decades promoting falsehoods about the consequences of our spending policies, expanding the role of the federal government and about the fragile state of Social Security and Medicare. They are committed to big spending not to the truth.
Meanwhile, Washington Republicans have been too busy rewriting history to be bothered with tackling our nation's problems.
A growing number of Republican politicians are eroding their own credibility, and simultaneously undermining the entire GOP brand, by continuing to breathe life into the lies surrounding the 2020 election. In 2023, the Republican machine refuses to move on from the destructiveness of President Trump's final months in office. These falsehoods around the 2020 election and its aftermath continue to captivate a very vocal segment of the GOP base and thus animate many Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The lie that the election was stolen is so pervasive among elected officials
that it has become almost a litmus test for loyalty to Donald Trump. To even suggest that there is no credible evidence of widespread, outcome-determining election fraud is an act of heresy in today's Republican Party. Republican politicians have set aside facts in favor of social-media fervor.
A further lie that has become gospel truth within the Republican Party is that the attack on our Capitol building was merely an "unguided tour" and a "mostly peaceful protest." We continue to hear Republicans work themselves into logical pretzels as they try to explain how there is a difference between the violence and riots in the summer of 2020 of left-wing organizations and the violence perpetrated on January 6.A related series of lies has been spun in the narrative about the so-called political prisoners who caused the devastation on January 6. Too many Republicans in Washington and right-wing media outlets describe these prisoners as languishing in an "American gulag," persecuted solely for their political beliefs. It's a deceptive narrative intended to gin up anger and frustrations among a disenchanted segment of the Republican base.
Republicans cannot initiate a national conversation about existential threats to America's future without first clearing the air about the lingering political lies. We should start with the simple truth that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.Here's an uncomfortable truth: The GOP can be the political party with integrity and a relentless commitment to telling hard truths, or we can be the political party that gives in to fanciful lies. We simply cannot be both.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/republicans-moment-of-choosing/ 
