To predict the GOP’s next move, just ask yourself, ‘What would Putin do?’ | Opinion
The latest unserious 48-hour Republican fad was pretending that the next speaker of the House of Representatives should be the same Donald J. Trump whose mad plan to upend our democracy led a mob to injure 114 police officers and defecate in the halls of the U.S. Capitol.
“We can make him Speaker and then elect him President!” Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene tweeted.
And hey, maybe after that, he could nominate himself to the Supreme Court. (No, justices don’t have to be lawyers, and just think what this would do for the ratings of oral argument audio.)
Checks and balances are so 234 years ago, according to today’s GOP. What more do we need, really, besides one cowardly strongman who recently told a cheering crowd that, never mind about due process, shoplifters should be shot on sight?
Trump’s calls for political violence have become so routine that nobody in the Church of DJT blinked even when he called retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley’s efforts to reassure China that the U.S. was not preparing an attack, “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
That I can use ALL CAPS, TOO doesn’t make me either Rocky Balboa or Muhammad Ali come back to life.
But predictably, Trump’s tough guy routine does seem to have convinced his Republican rivals that they have to scream for blood, too, just to try and keep up. Even Mike Pence, who rightly called Trump’s remarks about Milley “utterly inexcusable,” now claims that an “expedited” death penalty for mass shooters would put the kibosh on killing sprees.
Never mind that that’s in essence what happens already, since most mass murderers die at the scene of their crimes, either by their own hand or in the most overt possible ‘suicide by cop.’
On Friday morning, Trump stopped encouraging the notion that he might follow Kevin McCarthy as House speaker and endorsed Jim Jordan, the mega MAGA, see-no-evil Joe Paterno of Ohio State University’s wrestling team.
But that what’s left of the GOP is no longer sold on representative democracy is more obvious every day.
And none of the current chaos on or off the Hill makes any sense unless you ask yourself this question: What would Putin do?
- Systematically destroy trust in our institutions, check.
- Then level those institutions outright. That project is going pretty well, too.
- Try to weaken NATO, as Trump did throughout his presidency.
- Most urgently, though, end our support for Ukraine in fending off Russia’s illegal invasion.
It’s Trump’s steadfast defense of Putin and his country that’s behind the current GOP opposition to that crucial support.
A New York Times story headlined, “Opposition to Ukraine Aid Becomes a Litmus Test for the Right,” details how former conservatives are now falling in line on foreign policy, too. In fact, they’re embracing the same Trumpy “America First” isolationism invented by the antisemites who opposed U.S. involvement in World War II.
Just a week ago, House Democrats put out this statement: “When the House returns, we expect Speaker McCarthy to advance a bill to the House Floor for an up-or-down vote that supports Ukraine, consistent with his commitment to making sure that Vladimir Putin, Russia and authoritarianism are defeated.”
But if it’s the Trump-endorsed Jordan who succeeds McCarthy, the Ohio Republican has said that’s not going to happen: “The most pressing issue on Americans’ minds is not Ukraine. It is the border situation and crime on the streets.”
Since, let’s face it, neither party has an answer to “the border situation” and the two can’t agree on whether crime on the streets is caused by too many guns or too few, tying Ukraine aid to either of those issues is a guaranteed win for Putin, Russia and authoritarianism.
At some point, Russian “meddling” in our democracy became superfluous.
