I wonder when Republicans will stop pretending. It’s not new that President Donald Trump is morally indefensible – he’s a self-destructive narcissist – but we’re all watching the Republican party follow him off that cliff en masse. They’re all following him. What’s that about?
Think about the Republican moral standing. These self-described manly super-patriots can’t even find a working theme for defending Trump. They know they can’t support Trump on the facts after Trump explicitly admitted his crimes. Trump’s ‘defense’ is to confess to a new crime every week. That’s a dead end.
Republicans can’t defend Trump on the law when he openly defies both black-letter law and, you know, the Constitution. “Phony emoluments clause”? Really?
Republicans can’t even attack Democrats with process arguments. First, their rationale is painfully thin after the Starr Report and Clinton’s impeachment. Second, Trump blew up the ‘process’ arguments himself, insisting Republicans should argue the facts. (Trump clearly doesn’t really understand how damning those facts really are.) And this week, the House approved almost the same impeachment process the Republicans used during their impeachment.
Bad faith Republican arguments aren’t new. I know that. I watched Republicans decide to start arguing in bad faith sometime around Reagan’s administration. I blame Roger Ailes and Lee Atwater.
Trump, though, has been a higher level of corruption. From the moment of his victory, the GOP allowed Trump to openly deal himself into illicit profits, pointedly ignoring the gaping conflicts of interest that they’d excoriate anyone else about. Trump disobeys black-letter law, over and over, and Mitch McConnell shrugs. Trump’s edited call notes with the Ukrainian President? Even after shaving off the most damning details, Trump was clearly strong-arming President Zelensky. It was such a mob moment I looked around for Joe Pesci. (Trump always sounds like he spends too much time watching ‘Sopranos’ reruns.)
If you question a Republican about a scandal, they’ll pretend they haven’t read the transcript. Then they pretend they’re not interested. “No time; no time!” they call out as they hurry away. Each Republican insists they haven’t read that article, nope! Or they haven’t watched that press conference, or they simply cannot recall all the lurid details of each and every scandal. Too busy with the people’s work (they’re not doing)! Republicans swear they don’t see the most obvious conclusions, they lie about the words on the page, and they tactically misquote what someone said on national TV. It’s what they do now.
Are all Republicans lying to our faces? Probably not all of them. There might – might – be a few Republicans who are genuinely delusional. This is the party of Louie Gohmert, after all. But most Republicans aren’t complete idiots. They understand the truth staring them in the face. But it’s their job to ignore anything outside their ideology, so they fall back and lie to us about what we’ve seen with our own eyes, daring us to question them.
Do we know they’re lying? Please! It’s not as if Republicans hide their lies exceptionally well. We know it, and they know that we know. There are no secrets here. Instead, it’s a weird accommodation: Republicans don’t care that we see through the lies, and we pretend we don’t expect any better from them. That cycle spins out new examples every week. I start to giggle at the thought of, say, Jim Jeffries trying to outshout light and sound itself.
Dude, put your jacket back on.
But even those bald and shopworn lies are failing the GOP. Republicans hoping to defend Trump can’t find a lie they can pretend to hold. Not anymore. They don’t have the facts, not the process, not even public opinion. They’re standing there, empty-handed.
Instead, the party divided itself into moral Republicans, Trump supporters, and full Trump loyalists. The loyalists have started openly working to thwart the Impeachment inquiry by any means. Because they’re Republicans; that’s what they do now. And it seems to be OK with the rank-and-file since I don’t see anyone storming their offices asking what the goddamn hell they’re doing.
The supporters keep quiet. They aren’t available, they don’t issue comments or press releases, and they don’t hold town halls in their districts.
What about the ordinary, moral Republicans? You know, those small ‘c’, small ‘r’ conservative republicans who don’t support Trump on every single issue? Just ask Justin Amash. The party wraps the smallest questioning in red “Disloyal!” flags and drums them out of the GOP. It’s 100 percent or nothing, buddy.
It’s insane. Republicans know they’re killing their party. They know it. All the polls are consistent, and they can see it in any meeting with voters. Their unquestioning base is aging out. If the GOP loses their Gerrymandered seats and their voter suppression, Republicans will become a permanent minority. And yet they can’t stop themselves, falling over each other to put their bodies in front of Trump as he plays with his toys, repeats his increasingly unlikely stories, and ministers to his personal profits.
This week we get to watch as modern Republicans desperately search for new tactics. Forget the moral high ground. Watch as Matt Gaetz shouts tribal memes! See Steve Scalise decry “Soviet-style impeachment!” Stand in awe as the loyalists line up in front of the impeachment truck, linking arms to protect an administration even Republicans admit is morally indefensible.
Look, I’m not sure that ‘entertainment’ is the right word, but you can’t look away.
