POLITICAL TIMIDITY? WHAT'S THAT?

I'm frequently told that I should despise critics of President Trump who are Republicans, or who are recent defectors from the Republican Party, because their party affiliation means that they spent many years doing horrible things -- agitating for war in Iraq, shoveling more and more money to the already wealthy -- while attacking the good things Democrats have tried to do (expansion of healthcare coverage, gun regulations, encouragement of clean energy).

I understand this argument. Even the most fervent anti-Trump Republicans have many sins to atone for.

And yet I'm grateful to them because they seem bolder in their talk than many Democrats, starting with our presidential candidate, much as I admire him in many ways. Here's one example:

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough again called for Democrats to pack the Supreme Court in response to the GOP nominating and confirming a justice in the final year of President Donald Trump’s first term in office. Scarborough earlier this month called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to pack the Supreme Court “in response to Republican radicalism.” ...

“The Democrats are going to expand the court unless they just want to be run over the way they were run over the past two years with Mitch McConnell changing the rules of the Senate time and time again,” Scarborough outlined. “So … that’s up to the Democrats. I don’t know. I don’t know if they’re strong enough to do it or not, but I’ll tell you what, Republicans would do it.”

“If Harry Reid had done this to them, to shove two liberals down their throats and lie through their teeth to do it both times — you know what, I’m a former Republican, but I know how Republicans think,” he continued.

And then there's this:

People are understandably focussed on simply defeating Trump next week. But if they want to crush Trump's Republican party they must aim for a 1932 Herbert Hoover-scale defeat, not a 1992 Bush Snr one, argues @BillKristol https://t.co/orcNojv4rq

— Edward Luce (@EdwardGLuce) October 27, 2020

I do hear elected Democrats talking about trying to win a big victory (if only because they know that a small victory might be overturned by the federal courts and a smaller popular-vote victory could lead to a legitimate win by Trump in the Electoral College). But I don't hear the leaders of the Democratic Party talking about crushing Trump this way. So even though Kristol writes that he wants a crushing defeat for Trump in the hope that it will "open up the possibility for a re-making of the GOP and of conservatism itself," at least he wants to lay waste to the party as it exists now. He seems much more vengeful than Joe Biden and the Democrats' leaders in the House and Senate.

Similarly, Charlie Sykes, Kristol's colleague at The Bulwark, has said of the GOP as it now exists that he wants to "burn it all down."

I'm sure I'd loathe the party that Sykes and Kristol hope will emerge in place of the current GOP. But I appreciate the attitude. I wish the leading Democrats had some of it.