This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

What are Republicans up to these days?

For one thing, they are divided.  And, if you want to understand just how divided they are, look only so far as this quote from the New York Times:

“The powerful testimony from a parade of Republicans, in four tightly produced hearings, has exposed, in searing and consequential detail, how divided the party has become between the faction that accepts the reality of the 2020 election and the many more who still cling to Trump’s anti-democratic falsehoods about a stolen election.”

And, in riveting testimony under oath last week, an aide in the Trump White House, Cassidy Hutchinson, only added to Republican divisions. 

Some Republicans were concerned about her testimony which clearly implicated Donald Trump in trying, by violent means, to overthrow American democracy.

Others, despite the incredible evidence Hutchinson provided, chose to stick with Trump, presumably on the basis that they still believed in his ability to draw votes for their future candidacies.

The reality, of course, is that, in many general Republican circles, Trump does continue to hold sway.  It is possible that he could run for president in 2024 as some voters continue to fawn over him, which is just what he wants as a narcissist. 

The dark prospect for rational government gets even darker as contentions persist that President Joe Biden will be too old to run again.  And, though he says he will run, it is not clear who Democrats will turn to if he decides one term is enough.

Back to Republicans.  They have no shame.  Many of them just view what happened on January 6 as another celebration of their views that Trump didn’t lose and that he should go to any extreme to avoid the tag of “loser.”

Two recent quotes from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post tell this story as well as I can, if not better.

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL:  “They [the congressional hearings on the January 6 insurrections] are telling a fascinating and devastating story:  An American president tried to thwart the democracy that raised him high and to steal a presidential election he’d lost.

“And it almost worked.  But good people stopped it. There was a sturdy infrastructure of still-moral elected officials and bureaucrats and political appointees.  Against pressure, intimidation and mob rule they held. Many, most, were political conservatives, and many were people of deep religious faith.

“In explaining their motives and way of thinking on January 6, they quoted Scripture.  For Greg Jacobs, counsel to Mike Pence who was with the vice president in an undisclosed location on January 6, it was the lion’s den: “Daniel 6 was where I went.”

“Chief of staff Marc Short at the end of the terrible day texted Pence 2 Timothy 4:7:  “I fought the good fight, I finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  Rusty Bowers, speaker of Arizona’s House, testified he believes the writers of the U.S. Constitution were inspired by God. “I took an oath” to that document, he said.  And he wouldn’t break it.”

FROM COLUMNIST GEORGE WILL IN THE WASHINGTON POST:  “America the beautiful is today America the irritable, where road rage, unruly airline passengers and political violence — a protective fence surrounds the court — reveal a nation of short fuses and long-simmering resentments.  

“Intelligent people disagree about how, or even whether, the facts of contemporary civic culture should influence how the Constitution, including the first 10 amendments, should be construed.  But as a founder (John Adams) insisted, facts are stubborn things.”

Thus, with all the posturing, especially among Republicans, it is not an exaggeration to suggest that we could be heading toward another “civil war,” if the word “civil” even applies to the word “war.”

And, dissension over abortion, fomented by heightened by rhetoric on both (or all) sides, will only aggravate the risks.