The news media remains focused on President Donald Trump’s stupidly obvious mendacity. Hard not to watch, I suppose.  Trump’s a kleptocrat who’s furiously disemboweling our supposedly beloved democracy.  We check the news daily for updates about Robert Mueller’s investigation, hoping he’ll bring down the wrath of America on his evil.  And replace him with… what, exactly?  My problem is that Trump isn’t an aberration.  He didn’t transform Republicans into something different and darker.  Trump’s worse than the others, but in the same way that they’ve already debased themselves.  Trump matches the Republican corruption that spawned him; he is their rightful leader.  Do we want to replace him with another faithless, unethical suit?

What are the short-term alternatives if, say, Robert Mueller finds that Trump did something bad?  I don’t know, say Trump sold the election to Russia in return for tens of millions of dollars, then he whacked an old lady, six refugee families, and a dog so he could sell their building?  Pretend it was bad enough, anyway.  There are two (highly unlikely) Constitutional options, and both end up at President Michael Pence.  How happy that leaves you depends on your feelings about the new American theocracy.  (And heathen apostates like you will be the first targets of the Moral Enforcement Division!)  I think Trump chose Pence for the same reasons President George H. W. Bush (41) tapped Dan Quayle as his Veep: impeachment insurance.

The other option to Trump’s free-ranging exploitation and lying would be for Republicans in Congress to, you know, kinda, do oversight.  Oh, and then push back on Trump’s worst crimes.  Sounds like a plan, right?  Do that, and the rest of the Republicans could get back to their primary political goals of stacking the courts, gutting government oversight, and tearing away the social safety net.  All this terrible press is just slowing them all down.

As an aside, I have no idea why Republicans slaver on against the safety net.  They’ve been spitting for decades about the evil nature of financial security and health care.  And something about the poor enrages them more than normal.  They want poor people dead or deported or something.  I haven’t a clue why.  Doesn’t sound like a good time to me.  Still, they won lots of seats running on that platform, and we all talk about how elections matter.  (Except for any election a Republican loses.)

So why aren’t Republicans restraining even the most scurrilous corruption?  Party loyalty?  (“We’re With Stupid.”)  Cowardice?  Republicans already see Trump as their political death if they don’t push back.  And yet here we are, watching Republican ‘leaders’ twiddle their thumbs and whistle aimlessly, not meeting anyone’s eyes.  Guess how many Senate and Congressional hearings Republicans have held on misspending and conflicts of interest?  Zero.  Not a one.  After the first few dozen egregious examples, I assume most Republicans are OK with corruption.  As for the coward part, lord knows Trump’s a wuss, While but it looks more likely Republicans are deliberately avoiding any actions because they’re not upset.  After all, it’s what they tell us all the time when we ask them about each new insult.  I say we take them at their word.

It’s almost as if Republicans live in their own glass houses.

On last Sunday’s Meet the Press, Chuck Todd pushed Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) about Scott Pruitt’s corruption, retaliation, malfeasance, self-dealing, and all the rest.  Senator Rounds seemed unbothered at almost anything Pruitt did or might do.  Todd asked the Senator about his boundaries; at what point, Todd asked, would corruption cross the line for Rounds?  The Senator gave this speech:

Well, look. Let’s take a look at how many dollars the E.P.A. can actually save. The big picture. You know, we’ll nitpick little things. He has too many people on his security detail. It may add up to, to more than what the previous guy did. But what about the big picture of, of, of how he’s taking care of the steward– of the taxpayers’ dollars with the department, the E.P.A.? And what about the regulations that he said he’s going to clean up on that he is? And what about the response directly back out to allow businesses to actually grow and expand? Remember, this president said, number one, we had to have tax policy. We’ve got it. We said we had to have regulatory reform. We’ve got it. Scott Pruitt is a big part of that. He’s executing what the president wants him to execute.
­­— Senator Marion Michael Rounds (R-SD), Meet the Press, April 8, 2018

Hard to get more direct: ‘No,’ he’s saying, ‘corruption by itself doesn’t matter.’  Remember that Rounds is dismissing self-dealing, malfeasance, retaliation, and corruption along with a few million Pruitt needed to secure his ego.  Faced with ethical lapses and openly illegal actions, the good Senator is saying — on the air, answering a question he knew he’d get — that malfeasance only matters if it cuts into corporate profits too much.  The only measure of honor is the dollars it costs our corporate bosses.  Corruption would have to cost his (industry) bosses more than whatever new favors Pruitt can cut for them before he’ll consider it ‘bad.’  (And that’s only a maybe; it’s not like he promised he’d do anything about it even then.)

Wow.  I can’t believe he actually said out loud what they all seem to think.

The Republican party elders chastised Senator Rounds after his performance because his open indifference made their party look like they accepted and even condoned corruption.  Faced with that pressure and the negative news, the Senator later issued a ‘correction’ that denied he’d ever suggested such a negative approach to oversight and blamed Todd for his ‘gotcha questions.’

Ha!  I bet you believed me.  Of course Rounds didn’t do that, you silly goose!  Even though Republicans knew exactly what he’d said (every politician tracks the big news shows), no other Republican has suggested that Senator Rounds was incorrect, or that he misrepresented the Republican position.

The Trump corruption is not an accident.  Trump isn’t an isolated slime island that landed with a splat in our pristine political landscape.  Bribery and the quid pro quo are all that’s left of the Republican political model.  We can let the conservative Sen. Bob Corker explain the details to you.  Or maybe Carl Icahn?  (I still can’t believe Icahn didn’t get investigated.)

The worst part?  The Republican party can’t govern, even with the Presidency and majorities in both Houses.  Republicans pass tax bills filled with ethical conflicts and giveaways that cut tax revenues by hundreds of billions.  Then Republicans approve large spending increases for their favorite causes.  (“Here you go, military-industrial complex!  Have a few billion more!  Don’t forget us later!”)  And they will act surprised and shocked that they directly and deliberately ran next year’s deficit over a trillion dollars.  They even suck as grifters.  Today’s Republicans struggle to even get their short cons off without getting caught.

Go ahead: ask me about the Republican foreign policy.  Syria?  Ukraine?  Israel?  Argentina?  EU?  China?  Russia, god forfend?  President Donald Trump’s business (which he didn’t divest the way he promised) is pressuring the Panamanian President – their President – to intervene in another of Trump’s business dealings that went wrong there.  Apparently, they see no conflict there.  None of Trumps’ Republican buddies objected to that one, either.  Too busy with their domestic agenda, I’m sure.  Besides, using the weight of the United States Presidency to pressure small countries won’t have any foreign policy implications later.  Or maybe they’re assuming they won’t be in office long?  Or maybe they’ll just deny any culpability when the bill comes due.

The overwhelmed President Trump fumes about firing the entire FBI before they can uncover more of what he’s done, searching for another high-voltage distraction.  His administration struggles to find the smallest possible military action that will move dead Syrian children off the headlines, even as they warm Russia about what they intend.  The Republican party swears that nothing whatsoever is on fire; all that smoke and flame is fake news.  So… fun times, right?

And, in the middle, we’re gearing up for the 2018 midterm elections.  That should be interesting.  With any luck, the American people will show some intelligence, and this travesty of a Republican party will not survive.

That’s the real Constitutional answer.  Forget impeachment or the 25^th amendment: vote the bastards out of office.  Maybe we’ll even get a more honest Republican party out of it.  I hope we do.  I think the Democratic party is terminally hapless, so I do want a real opposition party.  Personally, though, I can’t see this Republican party recovering.

But what do I know?  For decades now, Republicans have increasingly depended on autocratic lies (Fox News, Sinclair, news deserts), rigging the system (voter suppression, Gerrymandering) and disinformation (Cambridge Analytica, dirty tricks, Fox News again, and possibly Russian bots) to win.  Maybe that’s all they need now.  I’m not sanguine.