Congressional cowardice is a national disgrace but it can be instructive for those of us who are political Centrists watching the nation go over the cliff of extremism.
Bear with me as I begin by talking about some bones. First, I want to mention the human backbone. Among other things, it enables us to stand straight.
As a figure of speech, having a backbone signifies courage. Most Republicans in Congress don’t seem to have one. And they’re too afraid of election defeat to grow one.
Many Democrats don’t have a backbone either, but most of them seem to have robust wishbones.
A furcula, or wishbone, adds strength to a bird’s throat and chest during flight. Since the 17th century it’s been a totem related to wishes for good luck. Democrat wishbones have endless checklists of citizen “rights” that are always free for recipients as long as other taxpayers foot the bill.
The world-class con man who won the 2016 election, told 16,241 verifiable lies in his first three years in office. The Liar-in-Chief created a fanatical following by telling right-wing whites falsehoods and fabrications they want to hear. He’s shown total contempt for the rule of law.
The relentlessly shrinking white population has showered him with cult-like devotion that Republican politicians fear to the point of violating their oaths of office rather than offend the Kool-Aid drinkers.
Congressional Fawning has become Rampant
But not so long ago, today’s fawning, boot-licking, ass-kissing Republicans had a very different view of the Disgrace-in-Chief.
Let’s go back to the 2016 Republican presidential debates.
The habitual liar accused the father of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas having something to do with the John F. Kennedy assassination:
“This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And he had a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology text book. His response is to accuse everybody else of lying. He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying. And it’s simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everybody else of doing.
“The man cannot tell the truth but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar, and 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.”
Compare that scathing assessment with the chummy scene in Texas where the president campaigned for Cruz’s re-election.
Over the recent Christmas holidays Sen. Cruz called the Articles of Impeachment against the President “laughable.”
Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio is another Republican who seems to have mis-placed his spine when it comes to the President’s political power among his cult followers. Consider what Rubio said in a February 2016 interview on CBS This Morning after a bruising debate the previous night in the Republican primary battle:
“I can just tell you that a con artist is about to take over the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement and we have to put a stop to it.” …
“The media is pumping him up as some sort of unstoppable force. Donald Trump has portrayed himself now consistently as fighting for the working people, and he has a record of sticking it to working people for 35 years. If any other candidate in this race had his record, there’d be non-stop reporting on it. But unfortunately, he’s being pumped up because many in the media with a bias know that he’ll be easy to beat in the general election.”
Compare that with a recent OpEd article by Miami Herald columnist Fabiola Santiago. She wrote that it looks to her like Senator Rubio is positioning himself to become the Secretary of State if our impeached President wins a second term.
Then there’s Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a politician MSNBC morning host Joe Scarborough calls a “sad figure” because “there are a lot of Lindseys there.”
Graham is seemingly comfortable with having two faces.
There’s one face from the days of the 2016 election, disparaging the reality-TV star from New York as a fraud, then ripping him for mocking Graham’s friend and fellow Republican, the late Sen. John McCain:
“I wanna talk to the Trump supporters for a minute. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know why you like this guy.
“I think what you like about him, he appears to be strong, and the rest of us are weak. He’s a very successful businessman and he’s gonna make everything great. He’s gonna take all the problems of the world and put ‘em in a box and make your life better. That’s what he’s selling.
“Here’s what you’re buying: he’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for…”
“What he said about John, I think, was offensive. He’s becoming a jackass at a time when we need to have a serious debate about the future of the party and the country.”
And there’s the face the South Carolina Senator shows these days. Lindsey Graham is one of the President’s most vocal defenders, appearing on endless news interview programs telling the viewers that a wonderful patriot and defender of the rule of law has been put on trial in an impeachment proceeding in the U.S. Senate. To Graham, they are purely partisan charges of abuse of power involving a foreign government and obstruction of attempts to investigate the alleged violation of his oath of office.
Cruz, Rubio, Graham—they’re just three of many spineless Republicans on Capitol Hill who have sold their integrity in exchange for re-election blessings from the Criminal-in-Chief.
The Takeaway Lesson from This Disgrace
There’s a lesson here for Centrists. The Tea Party and repressive right-wingers wrote the lesson plan. This is what they did to wreck our government.
They networked! They got semi-organized! They followed through and took action, particularly on election days.
You Centrists can do the same thing.
Find some like-minded sane Centrists and get together for coffee. Or a beer. Or go for a bike ride together.
Discuss who is going to be on your 2020 ballot.
Discuss which ones are Kool-Aid drinkers willing to ditch our democratic republic in favor of an authoritarian monarchy.
Then consider who is running against them this fall and consider if you’re willing to vote for them, even if they aren’t electrifying.
Finally, discuss how your group can find a similar group and join forces. There’s strength in numbers. Just ask the trembling, gutless Republicans in Congress.
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