Yesterday, two significant things happened in Washington: the Senate passed  Joe Biden's Covid rescue plan without any Republican votes. Kamala Harris passed the deciding vote. And Margorie Taylor Greene was supported by the overwhelming majority of House Republicans. There can no longer be any doubt about who and what the Republican Party is. Eugene Robinson writes:

Trump led the GOP's base deep into the wilderness. Republican leadership in Washington lacks the skills and the guts to lead the party back to reality — and back to constructive participation in addressing the massive challenges we face. Don't blame "both sides" for ruining the elegant, strategic, productive political competition we'd like to see. One party is trying to move the chess pieces. The other is trying to eat them.

And what is true of the federal Republican Party is also true at the state level:

At the state level, the Republican Party is, if anything, even less tethered to reality. The Arizona state GOP actually censured former senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain, widow of the late senator John McCain, for failing to blindly support Trump. A few Republican governors, such as Jim Justice of West Virginia, are doing well in the vaccination phase of the pandemic. Others, such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, continue to put politics over public health.

The Republicans will claim that Joe Biden's promise of bipartisanship is a lie. But Robinson correctly observes that "There are no productive deals to broker between objective reality and cynical fantasy, between truth and lies."

The Republican Party is damned.

Image: The Pepper Bough