Republicans Like This
For a long time, I’ve tended to give Republicans in Congress a pass for their supplication to Donald Trump. I used to think that surely, they knew Trump was an embarrassing buffoon, that he was a threat to democracy, and that if only they could all get past this era, things would return to “normal.”
But now it seems obvious that this is the goal most of them have been seeking all along. It’s not the crazy Jim Jordans or Chip Roys, it’s the rank-and-file, so-called normies who have secretly wanted a Trump-like figure — or even Trump himself — to return this country to its White Christian supremacy. There is no longer any doubt. Fascism is fun. Russia is our friend. Ukraine is our enemy. Listen to these Republicans. It’s what they say.
Sure, I heard some of them explain that resisting Trump could put their families in jeopardy. The lynch mob of Trump troglodytes would be camping out in front of their homes, threatening their children, doxxing them, etc. if they were to buck the Orange God King. I concluded these Republicans were garden-variety cowards, the banality of evil and all that.
But lately I have to conclude that this mess we’re in is what the Republican Party always wanted deep in the souls of its elected representatives. With a very few exceptions, these craven Republicans don’t want immigrants here. They want them out. Brutalizing them, if need be, but out — one way or the other.
They were always suspicious of NATO, believing the members were freeloaders totally dependent on Uncle Sam. Trump is just saying what so many of them thought but were afraid to say. These Republicans in Congress today never liked brown or Black people. Drains on Whites. Blacks, they whispered, were definitely low IQ, but had to be tolerated because the liberal news media would shame them if they expressed those views.
Today, these Republicans cheer the destruction or dismantling of the mainstream press. They don’t like contrary opinions. Too difficult, especially when they have to argue their positions in public. Fox News is their haven.
Most of them don’t give a damn about transgender kids but are eager to politicize the issue if it wins them the rube vote. Most would love to have Greenland join the union, but they’d hate to bestow statehood on the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico because that might give those terrible Democrats four more senators.
I guess most of them believe the 2020 election was actually stolen from Trump. They won’t say otherwise. The Biden victory margin of 7 million votes is inconvenient to be sure and, they apparently think, concocted by hidden hands. Biden, they think, was far more corrupt than Trump. Remember “the Biden crime family” bullshit?
Gerrymandering to hold onto power is a must to them and a perfectly shrewd move. They believe, as Newt Gingrich used to preach, that Democrats are evil, even Satanic, and they must be ridiculed, derided and disparaged because a Democratic victory would be cataclysmic. See Barack Hussein Obama. They actually love the racist Trump social media posts. He writes what they believe. And if he crosses the line, like when he portrayed himself as our Savior, well, that’s just Trump being Trump.
It has to be said as well that the Roberts Court is on board with all of this. Why else would the justices have given Trump total immunity for anything and everything wrong he may do as president or maybe even afterwards? Justices Alito and Thomas are disgraceful, unashamed partisans but may soon be retiring to give Trump a chance to nominate two brand new toadies who will lock in Republican, Christian, White Supremacist rule for another generation.
These Republicans don’t believe Trump is slipping. He’s razor sharp, isn’t he? So much more with it than Biden. They think the fact that Trump posts hateful shit all night long is just another sign of his vim, vigor and vitality. Go ahead and pick a fight with the Pope, Mr. President. The Republicans stand behind the broad-shouldered president and believe he’s on the side of Jesus. When they ask themselves What Would Jesus Do? they actually believe Christ would have made fun of the crippled, cheated the poor, and lied a hundred times a day.
I can’t make any more excuses for them. If they don’t believe what I’ve written here, I’m waiting for them to stand up and say so. But they won’t. They like it. They dig the power for power’s sake. They like rubbing it in. For them, it’s “do unto others before they do unto you.”
Judging from the questions these Republicans ask at committee hearings, they think Kash Patel is doing a bang-up job as head of the FBI. Ditto, Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence. “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, they find absolutely no fault with. Actually, these Republicans were fine with Kristi Noem, the puppy killer, and Pam Bondi, the insult comedian — until they weren’t.
But maybe, just maybe, the public is beginning to see these Republicans as the reason for their current misfortune. The high gasoline and grocery prices, the dumb war with Iran, the ICE thugs, the besmirching of America’s good name abroad. Maybe the public understands now that Sen. Mitch McConnell could have ended this nightmare way back in 2021 by gathering enough of his fellow Republicans to convict and remove Trump, bar him from ever holding office again.
I mean look at the polls. In the latest ABC News-Washington Post survey, 62 percent of the country disapproves of the job Trump is doing. Seventy-six percent disapprove of the way he’s handling the high cost of living. Fifty-nine percent disapprove of the way he’s handling immigration; an issue he demagogued all the way to the White House.
Yet, you still don’t see many Republican lawmakers bailing out on Trump. And one must conclude that they at least would give him very high marks on the issues the public finds him wanting. They must think he’s doing just fine. And that he’s definitely not a global embarrassment who’s alienated Europe, turned Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney into a hero for thinking people everywhere, and who is being outmaneuvered by a bunch of mullahs with a 7th Century mentality.
To these elected Republicans, Trump is their champion. And they intend to support him all the way off the cliff because they agree with everything he does. Don’t give them a pass. They brought this on themselves — and on us.
As Mary Trump said, he gives them permission to be their own worst selves.
He is their dream come true. The present and the near future are much more like what Democrats have wanted than Republicans ever did, which is reflected in the Pew Research poll from a few years ago, which showed Republicans four times as far to the right as Democrats are to the left. They are the party of a white and straight America, rejecting all who don’t fall in those categories. Even those who profess the same political philosophy as they do. African Americans were Republicans for about 100 years until Goldwater broke them of that habit, and they are about to do that again with Latinos nationwide as they did in California. It’s an existential crisis for them to have to live in a multiracial, multiethnic, multifaith society, so they act out in such a way as to alienate all but their most hardcore supporters. It’d be tragic if it weren’t so belligerent and abusive.