Earlier this month, West Virginia GOP leaders offered a staggering self-assessment of their own party:
“Most mainstream Republicans know their party has been hijacked by the extreme right,†Dolph Santorine, chairman of the Ohio County Republican Party, confessed in an article he wrote for Lede on July 7.
That’s the “straight from the horse’s mouth†truth. And, tragically for West Virginians, there’s a laundry list of evidence proving state Republican leadership right. The GOP has in fact been hijacked -- from local Republicans all the way to the Oval Office -- by extreme ideologues and oligarchs waging an unprecedented war on working-class Americans and West Virginians.
Republicans have fired thousands of West Virginians; killed their good-paying jobs; undermined unions; cut AmeriCorps that brings young people into West Virginia, all because they are more loyal to the richest multi-billionaire in the world, Elon Musk, and to President Donald Trump than they are to working West Virginians.
Republicans are gutting Medicaid and SNAP. The GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill†will shutter rural hospitals, and everyday West Virginians will suffer.
Republican leaders have sided with Big Pharma, instead of suing for maximum benefits for the opioid epidemic that they created. To twist the knife even further, they’re killing drug treatment programs, halting hope and progress for so many West Virginians who are just starting to turn their lives around.
Right-wing extremists stormed our Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Then, GOP leaders trampled the rule of law, pardoned these convicted criminals, put them back onto our streets, where they have committed additional crimes. These are the actions of a self-described “hijacked†and “extreme†right-wing party.
Even when our own families, friends and neighbors here in the Mountain State lose everything, including loved ones, in mass-casualty natural disasters, the GOP has failed time and time again to get their own party’s leaders to lift a finger to help.
West Virginians in McDowell, Logan, Mingo and Ohio counties carried (and continue to carry) the rebuilding, recovery and healing of these communities on their backs, and our Republican leadership operates with no sense of urgency. While FEMA declarations sat on the desks of Republicans, these leaders wined and dined with the president and vice president, specifically celebrating the “Big, Beautiful Bill†that will decimate our communities, starve our children and abandon our elderly, sick and disabled.
With their own words, talking about themselves and their own party being “hijacked by the extreme right,†combined with their cruel, recent actions, we must believe them when they tell us who they are.
These horrendous Republican policies are so extreme that Democrats, independents, nonpolitical entities and even staunch conservatives have spoken out against them. The Mountaineer Food Bank, perhaps the most respected, nonpolitical organization in West Virginia, recently had to ask all food pantries in the state to oppose Republican legislation that cut off food needed to feed hundreds of thousands of hungry West Virginians. Despite this call for mercy, West Virginia Republicans voted for this bill to starve West Virginians anyway.
Even the very conservative U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops took a historic stand against the barely passed Republican “Big Beautiful Bill,†officially saying it causes “unconscionable cuts to healthcare [sic] and food assistance, tax cuts that increase inequality ... and the greatest harm to those who are especially vulnerable in our society.†And as you can probably guess, yes, all West Virginia Republicans in Congress voted for this unconscionable bill.
West Virginia GOP leaders are right, their party has been “hijacked by right-wing extremists†and West Virginians are, and will be, paying the price for it.
So, where does that leave the other side? The Democratic Party, the left, the pro-working class? Unlike the extremist GOP attacking working people, we will rally for the working class, at least as long as I have any say about it.
We are unapologetically sticking up for poor people being harassed, fired and abandoned by their self-described extremist Republican government.
We’re working our butts off to protect West Virginians. To protect our jobs from billionaires. To protect Medicaid and SNAP most West Virginians depend on. To get West Virginians the help we need when it floods, or doing it ourselves when our government fails us. We want to keep West Virginians safe from extremists, especially political-dynasty families who use big government against their own people.
