It’s important to help the American people see the dangerousness of Trump’s conduct, but also to see how the Republicans in the Senate have disgraced themselves by exposing the nation to this ugly and dangerous spectacle of this lawless Trump unleashed:
in the way he’s weaponized the Justice Department, making it flagrantly into an instrument to protect his friends and strike down his enemies; how he fired the Director of National Intelligence for fulfilling the duties of his position, in making sure the right people in Congress knew the important findings of American intelligence; firing him in order to keep people unaware of how the Russians are again trying to help him get elected, doing nothing to protect the nation against this attack because it benefits him; firing an important public servant for putting his responsibility to the nation ahead of looking after Trump’s interests.Trump has made still more naked his determination to turn the U.S. government into an instrument to serve himself.
Trump, as it has been much observed, has shown his intentions and his nature more nakedly since his defeat in the impeachment trial of the forces of the rule of law.
Which brings us to the Republicans who bear full responsibility for this ugly and frightening spectacle besetting the nation.
There was nothing ambiguous about what those Republican Senators were obligated to do. But they gave the nation not a whit of it.
This President, the Republicans knew full well, had committed a veritable compendium of impeachable offenses. The oath the Republicans had taken — “to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” as they all swore with their hands on a Bible to do — required the removal of this President about as clearly as one could imagine.
But that oath was barely a speedbump to impede their complete subservience to a President whom they knew sacrifices the good of the nation for his own individual benefit. As the President works to turn the United States into a Banana Republic — where the law is no check on power, but a weapon wielded by power, and where the intelligence services are turned into instruments to serve the strong man — the Democrats should make sure that the blame lies with those morally bankrupt Republicans.to serve not the nation but the strong man.
It is because of the Republicans in the Senate that we’ve got a President who is complicit in the efforts of Putin’s minions to manipulate the elections to their benefit, helping Putin choose who will wield power in the United States. Putin, the leader on the world stage most hostile to American power.
“This is on you, you Republican Senators. Shame on you!”
That’s how I’d like to hear the Democrats excoriating the Republicans for how disgracefully they’ve acted.
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NOTE: I will be publishing here — in several installments — a series titled “Democrats Can Defeat the Republicans with this Star Wars/ Avatar Strategy.” The piece above presents one possible component in that overall strategy for taking power away from the destructive force that rules the Republican Party of these dark times.
