Yes, Trump is a Republican.

So Trump decided that America wouldn’t be a world leader anymore.  He already ditched the EU and NATO, and now he’s repudiated the Paris agreement.  He’s finally convinced everyone that the US is no longer a world power.

Nobody’s surprised that Trump’s empty justifications clearly show he hasn’t a clue how the whole thing works.  Come on: complain about how unfair it is that Americans buy so may ‘German’ cars, unaware they’re made in the US.  Tell me again about the horrible, bad, terrible clauses in the (voluntary) Paris climate agreement.

But he’s not doing this alone.  Republicans have been voting against each of these ideas for decades.  Write any new bill about climate change and you can be guaranteed that Republicans will vote against it en masse, just like they opposed the EU and NATO in vote after vote.

I still haven’t figured out the Republican horror over charity.  Individual Republicans actually give equal or more money to charity than most Democrats.  If you thought the party would take the hint you’d be far too optimistic.  Republicans used to vote to reduce every dollar of foreign aid, even though the amounts were laughably small, and despite huge documented benefits.  Does the very idea of helping offend them?  Now they’ve stopped pretending any compassion, and Republicans simply vote to zero out foreign aid entirely.

So Trump wants to kill Medicare.  Anyone want to pretend that’s not what Republicans demanded?  In the past, Republicans said they wanted a smaller safety net that focused on those in the most need.  At some point, they just said screw it.  Now they oppose every last bit of it, focusing their strongest ire on the poorest, neediest, and the most helpless.  Can’t imagine they’d cut food stamps for hungry people?  Think again.  Make people with permanent disabilities work for the money?  Only after they take their mandated drug tests, too.

Trump wants to cut taxes on rich people and large corporations, who are already getting most of the money, shifting the tax burden to the middle class and cutting services to the poor and helpless.  Hell, that’s a core Republican party principle these days.

Trump bailed on human rights across the world, which makes sense, given that he’s also stripping out Civil Rights across the federal government.  He’s talking about discarding every consent decree he can find.  Odd, given that ‘consent decrees’ are the places where both federal authorities and local politicians have already agreed on both the problems and how to fix them.  Even though Trump quivers at the very idea of brown people, it’s not like the Republican party hadn’t shown the same hostility to minority rights over the last half century.

Trump and his kleptocracy is horrible in every way.  He ruins everything he touches.

But he’s not doing it alone.  None of this would work if the Republicans didn’t go along with every one of his grunts and farts as if they’re the image of intellectual clarity.  Why would they go along so easily?

Yes, Republicans are upset with Trump, but only because he’s so damned obvious about it.  People can see what he’s doing.  Republicans have spend decades, and millions of dollars, developing and driving wedge issues, splitting every faction of the population into hysterical distrust of their fellow Americans.  That was the goddamn plan, so they’re not upset at that part.  But they worked hard not to leave their fingerprints on stuff.  Trump is doing exactly the same, which they’re cool with, but he does it so badly that everyone can tell.  It’s like he’s leaving duct tape over the door locks.