My elementary school gave split grade report cards. Nowadays that's how I evaluate Republicans
When I was a kid our report cards had two letter grades for each subject. Don't have a clue how widespread that practice is now, but it produced the slogan "gets an A for Effort." While my report cards graded me both on Achievement and on Effort, lately I apply a different filter for Republicans. I have started split grading them on both Policy and Patriotism .
I would be hard pressed to think of any Republican in Congress who earns even a C in my book for Policy. Perhaps there are a couple of Republican Governors who might deserve a C grade for policy, but in congress at most a smattering of Republicans scrape by with D's while the vast majority earn a solid failing grade. For almost my entire life that policy grade was the only one that mattered. But for almost my entire adult life I pretty much took it for granted that, with a few exceptions, Republicans (at the national level at least) would not embrace an overtly fascist overthrow of our constitutional order. Sadly, live and learn.
Our democracy has not been so threatened as it is today since at least the McCarthy era, but more likely not since the Civil War. That's forced me to consider split grading of Republicans. Virtually all of them suck when it comes to policy, but a minority of them have shown some willingness to take a stand for our democracy. And of course the survival of our democracy is of paramount importance. So now I assign Republicans a patriotism grade also, and for the duration of our current constitutional crisis, that grade has real meaning.
I give an "A" for patriotism to the active Never Trumpers, even those who fall woefully short on policy. If they are actively organizing to defeat Trump's authoritarian putsch, they earn that. I give high patriotism grades also to Republicans who have or will vote for Trump's impeachment (either one.) I assign at least good grades for patriotism to those Republicans who endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020, and to the small handful of Republicans who at least briefly opposed Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination. I assign patriotism good grades also to Republicans who protected (in the face of real pressure) the sanctity of our election process, like the one Republican on Pennsylvania's election certification board who voted with Democrats to certify the Pennsylvania results for Biden under the spotlight of Trump's rage
Then we descend to the level of mere average and passing grades (again on patriotism only.) That includes those who, like Ex-Senator Corker, tried to provide some opposition to Trump's insanity at least for awhile, and never devolved into becoming Trump boot lickers, Republicans who were willing to accept that Joe Biden won the election once all of the networks etc. called it for him also earn a passing patriotism grade from me. Those who never flat out asserted that Trump won the November election, but who waited for the Electoral College to meet before accepting Trump's defeat, scrape by with a grade of "D" for patriotism. The rest earn F's, and that should be a scarlet letter worn on their chests for the rest of their days on earth, or at least until they admit their complicity in the attack on our democracy and sincerely atone for that mortal sin against America.
