UPDATE March 10, 2017]: A tweaked version of this post ran as my column this morning, which you can read here.
“No, no. This guy who did not disclose his engagement with the Russian Ambassador when asked about it—the one who said people who do exactly this should be removed from office—should definitely oversee an investigation into other administration officials who have done the same.”— Some Actual Elected Republicans, basically
Remember, by the way, that it was not even two months ago that Sen. Collins suggested—despite his maintaining a voting record so cumulatively racist that Coretta Scott King once made a plea that he not rise to the level of Federal judiciary—we see in Attorney General Sessions his decency. Not long afterward, Sessions lied about his engagement with Russian officials at his confirmation hearing.
Whelp.
These people are so bad at being the authoritarians they aspire to be, and have so much poorly concealed blood on their hands, that a collective downfall is inevitable. It makes you wonder why they wanted to take power so literally when paying for political influence has long been at once as lucrative as it is easy.
Speaking of buying and selling power, don’t forget that a handful of Maine GOP Congressmen and Senators are members of ALEC, an industry group that literally writes legislation on the behalf of “pro-business” [and largely anti-human] legislation. That so-called swamp the President supposedly drained by replacing it with even more affluent corporatists trickles all the way down, apparently.
It reminds of Republican Rep. Jeb “the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau must go” Hensarling, and the fact that Hensarling’s top donors are Bank of America, Rent-A-Center and financial services companies.
It reminds of the GOP enjoying press attention for talking about jobs, and every existential threat to them aside from automation—the one that is most ominous. And of the party’s move to redistribute tax revenues to speed up that automation in the name of “saving” jobs.
It’s no secret that the Republican Party is brazenly committed to corporate autocracy, and, increasingly, that they are totally fine looking the other way of this sloppy grab for power. We knew this already.
What they are becoming more brazen about is the fact that they believe their constituencies to be both lazy and stupid.