'The Republican Party needs to be crushed' to save America: columnist

Eugene Robinson appeared on MSNBC on Friday morning to discuss his recent Washington Post column, "How dumb can a nation get and still survive?"

"How did we become, in such alarming measure, so dumb?" Robinson wrote in the column. "Why is the news dominated by ridiculous controversies that should not be controversial at all? When did so many of our fellow citizens become full-blown nihilists who deny even the concept of objective reality? And how must this look to the rest of the world?"

"Idiotically, we seem determined to find out," Robinson concluded in the column, after running down a series of major recent news stories — from the debt ceiling debacle to South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham getting booed for advocating COVID vaccines to former president Donald Trump's "big lie."

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday, Robinson said, "We have to get, if not smart, at least not totally dumb."

"We have to be more intelligent about our national life, our political life, and our personal lives, if we're going to make it, if we're going to survive" he said. "People talk about this being another American century. How is that going to happen if we are acting like a bunch of clowns all the time?"

Host Joe Scarborough noted that conspiracy theories are "spreading around infecting the minds of Americans."

"They're going to school board meetings, shouting and screaming and starting fights, doing just doing absolutely heinous things to fellow Americans because of the conspiracy theories," Scarborough said, adding that there is "a segment of politicians who thrive on that."

Robinson agreed that some politicians are "encouraging this ignorance by lying to their constituents and trying to scare them into continued support."

"Politicians, and let's be honest, we're talking about Republican politicians, are in part responsible, they're certainly contributing to this ignorance, but also people have personal responsibility, and need to own their own ignorance and do something about it," Robinson said. "Really, you're going to get all your news from Facebook? That's how you're going to go through life?"

"The column was just kind of a bleat of frustration," Robinson added. "The question is, what do we do about this? Politically, what we do is, the Republican Party needs to be crushed in an election, because parties, when they're crushed, that's when they actually reform and change. Until that happens, I don't see the Republicans reforming at all and I don't see them behaving any better."

Watch below.

Eugene Robinson on the GOPwww.youtube.com