America's 'violent father': Analyst warns of GOP's dark new direction

President Donald Trump's base has taken to using the language of parent and child, even calling him "Daddy" at some key events. This concept in American politics is nothing new, Susan Milligan wrote for The New Republic — but in recent years, it has taken on a far darker significance than in years past.

"More than 30 years ago, the journalist Chris Matthews argued in The New Republic that there was 'an accepted division of chores in American politics today,' in which Republicans 'protect us with a strong national defense' and 'worry about our business affairs' while Democrats 'look after our health, nutrition, and welfare.' 'The paradigm for this snug arrangement,' he added, is 'the traditional American family. ‘Daddy’ locks the doors at night and brings home the bacon. ‘Mommy’ worries when the kids are sick and makes sure each one gets treated fairly.'"

To some extent, this remains true — Democrats are the party voters trust on health care, education, and social services, while Republicans are the party voters trust on business and security issues. The problem is, Republicans are now more like America's "violent father," wrote Milligan.

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Since taking office, she continued, Trump has shown "abject cruelty" with his power.

"He immediately froze foreign aid and moved to eviscerate the U.S. Agency for International Development, which helps alleviate hunger, improve health care, and provides disaster relief in the poorest parts of the world; food was left to rot in ports and warehouses around the globe. He slashed grants for medical research (a federal court has put a stop to it for now), imperiling work on cancer and infectious diseases. He engineered a mass firing of as many as 220,000 federal employees that is ongoing as you read this, with tens of thousands having received impersonal termination notices."

"Forget stern-but-loving Daddy," she wrote. "Trump’s GOP is downright belligerent: the Daddy who berates umpires at Little League games and makes his own kid cry for dropping a fly ball, who other parents won’t carpool with because he flips the bird while cutting off motorists. 'What we have now is a violent father, and a father to be feared. The one to whom other parents always go, ‘Who the hell is that guy?’' said scholar Matthew MacWilliams, author of the book "On Fascism: 12 Lessons From American History."

And Democrats themselves have bought too much into the two-parent analogy of government, Milligan wrote, by assuming that because they lost this election, it means America voted for and approves of not just a Daddy, but an abusive Daddy. Instead, they should go all in on the fight to save the soul of the country.

"Ironically, it’s this very timidity and overcaution, especially among Democratic leaders on the Hill, that’s starting to fuel a debate that could indeed tear at the party’s soul, imperiling its chances of clawing back power in future elections," she warned.