It’s Party Time (or The Disunited States of The GOP)

“…the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.”

George Washington – 1^st President of the United States and one of the founders

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

John Adams – 2^nd President of the United States and one of the founders

“I just don’t think it’s useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,” We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do like repealing Obamacare if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans. I think it makes no sense.”

Rand Paul – A United States Senator

I’m going to draw up a petition.  Draw up a petition and then go stand in front of the local supermarket with a copy on each of about a dozen clipboards.  You’ve seen those guys.  They camp out at one of the store entrances and you do one of two things.  You either take a detour to another entrance or, and this is the option you often regret, you walk slowly past the guy so that he’ll engage you and you can find out what all the hubbub is about.

My petition is going to propose changing the name of our country from The United States of America to, The  Disunited States of GOP.  Seriously folks, let’s stop pretending.  That gang of knaves from the Republican Party doesn’t really give a shit about America.  America, the country and people that the Republicans are supposed to be serving is located somewhere in the deep dark bowels of the GOP priority list. There’s a lot of lip service paid to “the American people” and what “we will leave for our grandchildren” but the only American people they’re interested in are the ones that feather their nests.  And as for the grandchildren; unless they turn out to be large donors or CEO’s the GOP won’t leave them a pot to piss in.  

Mike Pence proudly declared at the GOP convention, “I am a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.”  Given many of Pence’s statements and policies I’d say that Jesus might take offense to the Christian part but that’s for another post.  My question to Pence would be, where does America fit into your hierarchy? An appropriate follow up would be where does Russia fit in? 

Our very first President saw the partisan graffiti on the wall and issued a stern warning against party politics.  Jefe numero dos, John Adams considered party politics to be a pariah of the young republic.  Of course it got worse with each administration until now when party allegiance has essentially kicked loyalty to America to the curb.

We only have to look back a short year to the Republican primaries.  Remember when Donald Trump was seen by the Republican hierarchy as an affliction?  Seems long ago and quaint now doesn’t it? 

Take Marco Rubio – please, take him – away.  It was a year ago, when Rubio said of Trump:

          "This boiling point that we have reached has been fed, largely, by the fact that we have a frontrunner, in my party, who has fed into language that basically justifies physically assaulting people who disagree with you,"

          "We're going backwards here. This is a frightening, grotesque, and disturbing development in American politics."

Rubio characterized Donald Trump as a “con artist” and “the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency.”

And yet when it came down to the general election Little Marco decided to endorse Trump; ostensibly because he was a better choice than Hillary Clinton.  But let’s not delude ourselves for a second that he wouldn’t have endorsed Trump over Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden or JFK or Jesus himself if the Lord and Saviour happened to be a Democrat.  His own Republican constituents would have pilloried him for that.  And so Little Marco endorsed a (to use Rubio’s own words) frightening, grotesque, disturbing, con artist to be the 45^th President of the United States.

Ten short months ago Ted Cruz said of Trump;

“I say pathological because I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon and one thing in the evening, all contradictory and he’d pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it, but the man is utterly amoral.”

Pathological liar or not, all was forgiven by the GOP because he was their pathological liar.  And what the hell, how much harm could an utterly amoral man in the White House cause as long as he’s their guy.  Reminds me of the purported quote by FDR about the Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

Rand Paul doesn’t see any benefit coming from Republicans investigating any fellow Republicans when it comes to some possible skullduggery between Trump’s people and Russia.  

You’re familiar with Russia, right?  They’re the bad guys; the guys who the Republican hero Ronald Reagan described as the evil empire.  It was Reagan who in a speech in 1983 said:

“Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness—pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.... So, in your discussions of the nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”

Trump and his stooges have managed to turn the Russian black hat into a light shade of gray.

There have been calls for an independent bipartisan probe of the Trump – Russia imbroglio but House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes is treating that idea as if someone were trying to hand him a rattlesnake.  “There is not going to be one (an independent, bipartisan probe) I can tell you there is absolutely not going to be one,”

Well that’s because where there’s smoke there might be fire and if there’s a fire here it could burn down the Republican Party and the Republicans don’t have the stomach for that.  Better to hope that the fire just burns itself out even if, in the end it might just set the whole nation alight.  Gutless doesn’t begin to describe the likes of Nunes.  Ever hear the stories of soldiers who throw themselves on a live grenade to save their comrades?  Yeah don’t look for those guys in the Republican Congress.

And it isn’t just the Russia issue that galls me.  It’s the tacit acceptance of the constant flow of bullshit that flows from Trump’s hole.  Trump spewed a string of whoppers in his address to Congress.  One of my favorites, and apparently one of his favorites since he uses it all the time, is the story about 95 million Americans being out of work.  Well it’s true; they are out of work.  The problem is that of that 95 million, 44.1 million are retired, 15.4 million are disabled, 12.9 million are taking care of a family member and another 15.5 million are in college or job training. They are listed as not wanting a job.  I can vouch for one of those 95 million. My wife’s retired and has no desire for Trump to find her a job. 

But the boys and girls in the GOP don’t care about lies as long as the lies don’t come back to bite them.  They don’t care about any potential damage done to America as long as it’s good for the party and keeps them in power and feeding from the public and corporate troughs. 

There is no greater proof that the Republicans care more about themselves and their worthless party than the fact that they vilified Trump a year ago as dangerous and immoral and then tacitly and in some cases overwhelmingly accepted Trump after his nomination and whole heartedly embrace him now.  It is proof positive of party over country.

There’s a fair chance that the party will turn on Trump but it won’t be when the pillars of our republic start to crumble. No, the party will abandon Trump when there’s a sense that the electorate is planning on nailing the party hide to a wall. As soon as their little party boat starts springing a few leaks they’ll head for the lifeboats and leave the women and children, and Trump behind.

Until then I can just see Paul Ryan and his fellow knaves laughing uproariously while sipping their scotch.  “And did you hear the one about where Donnie saves all those Ford jobs when he really didn’t?  That’s a great one.  Gets me every time.”

I wonder if Ryan knows how warm it gets in hell.  

As of this writing, Trump has accused, without citing evidence, that then President Obama wiretapped The Trump Tower before the election. If it turns out that no evidence of a wiretap exists then what will the Republican's do? How long before they find that they've been painted into a corner by their own President?    

~ Posted By Paulie  San Francisco CA