Historians and political scientists are scrambling to provide real-time academic terms and definitions for what currently ails our polity here in America. Those looking for solace search ardently for previous precedents in our national timeline, the better to assure we have faced this before and survived to tell the tale. Yet and still, the further down our current road we travel, the more difficult that task becomes.
Those who talk aimlessly about the prospect of civil war surely don’t appreciate the trials the last one created. And few would dispute that only the protection two oceans afforded at that particular moment in human technological development prevented foreign incursions seeking to capitalize on our cannibalism. Whatever another such conflagration would look like, it’s a sure bet our adversaries are in a better position to manipulate it for their purposes. But, histrionics aside, where do we really stand on the spectrum of national dissolution? After all, whatever our current plight, nobody around DC let it keep them from game 7 and World Series glory…. did they?
“Regime cleavage” is one of those preposterously obscure terms only a poly sci major with nightmares of mid-terms past or present would recognize. In a nutshell it refers to an erosion of respect of/concern for a governmental system’s foundations and established practices by a significant bloc of citizens and leaders who convey their will. Yesterday’s straight party line House vote on the next phase of impeachment fully clarified a GOP within the throes of such inclinations, stridently equating the rule of law with leftist intrigue, and setting forth competing elements that cloud our civic horizon.
The pattern for Republican ingestion of and steady immersion by Trump’s incessant disdain for any sort of established propriety has been predictable and wholly unsatisfactory since the toxic launch of his campaign back in 2015. Now, however, it has metastasized into outright servile homage, where anything other than unquestioned support of his rabid sedition is seen as apostasy. Early on the routine had four main steps: first shock and measured criticism; then deflection of the act by attacking the Democratic response; next creating equivalence for the act and asserting the other side does it as well; finally, forgetting about the whole thing and declaring the American people expect bipartisan solutions to problems “they care about,” not dwelling in the rear view to make political hay out of yesterday’s news.
The ugly saga of Trump’s scheme to extort a newly elected Ukrainian government for the purpose of disabling the Biden presidential campaign now highlights an odious new trajectory to the way Republicans respond to his corruption. Instead of shock there is simply grudging passivity, with both deflection and equivalence almost immediate and reactively prosecuted without reservation. Instead of coping with the burden Trump’s fait accomplis force them to bear, much of the House GOP now sees opportunities to brandish pro-MAGA bonafides with no quarter to the facts that are beyond reasonable doubt. Instead, pressuring Zelensky to do Trump’s dirty work is ennobled as exactly what “this President was elected to do,” another promise kept!
As Trump’s term has deteriorated into one unprecedented nadir after another, GOP lawmakers have actually narrowed their range of options, more comfortable putting themselves into the same corner Trump occupies. Of course, unhinged Trump rhetoric is now business as usual, Trump being Trump. “Inappropriate” or “not how I would have put it” is the most one gets these days up to and including the worst of his rabid gibberish. As for patently impeachable conduct like the Ukrainian affair? It’s no longer the crime but instead how it is investigated… process.
A steady stream of rock solid witnesses, with comparable credibility, continue to come forward to fully validate the President wanted to withhold near a half billion dollars of critical military aid to a former Soviet satellite now again under siege by Russia, yet the House Minority Leader is only interested in “transparency.” When a group of Hannity darlings “stormed” a hearing they whined was “shutting out the American people,” the implication was sinister Dems were secretly kneeling around a cauldron chanting Soros mantras. Last anybody checked every committee in Congress consists of exactly half minus one Republican, but mobs seldom dwell on details.
The White House has based its entire defense on the transcript it provided to the public of Trump’s July conversation with Zelensky. Despite one nail after the other being driven into the quid pro quo coffin, the President has tweeted again and again the transcript renders all else void and absolves him. But now, as both decorated veteran and National Security Council staffer George Vindman, and another NSC staffer, Tim Morrison, decimate that proposition, a shameless shift is underway toward regime cleavage territory. Who cares if there was a quid pro quo, what’s wrong with doing whatever is necessary to drain the swamp? Why should we give military aid to a pipsqueak who won’t help lock the Bidens up? Add that to what Minority Whip Steve Scalise breathlessly terms “a Soviet-style process” and we get 40 percent or so of the US and their elected officials saying “so he did it, who cares?…. Try and do something about it! The Constitution doesn’t apply to, how did our beloved leader put it, oh yea…. human scum!”
A quick trip to Twitter or Trump’s Facebook page confirms wretched core sensibilities are now at least malleable, at worst outright hostile, toward the Constitution or any previous White House best practices. If the Mueller Report’s meticulous verbiage and open ended conclusions left enough light for a benefit of the doubt, the Ukraine investigation does not. It really is open and shut.
Yesterday not one House Republican voted to even approve the open impeachment inquiry they have ceaselessly claimed the Democrats were resisting. Even Florida Republican Francis Rooney, who was literally forced into retirement after only two terms for casually stating a desire to “get all the facts on the table,” fell back into line. Incredibly, more Democrats (2) voted no than Republicans voted yes. Forget “big tent,” this GOP couldn’t muster a lean-to.
About 160 years ago roughly half of America declared their desire to secede rather than take yes for an answer on slavery. “Do something about it” was their challenge then, just like it’s the seditious wretched core’s now. This is what it’s come to, the manifesto of Trump’s GOP: we back a lazy, unhinged and utterly seditious lunatic, who brazenly breaks the law and engages in conduct the Constitution clearly defines as impeachable. Elections have consequences and you’re just going to have to lump it until 2020. But, by the way, since you have refused to do that with this latest coup attempt, we reserve the right to fully discredit 2020’s results if we don’t like them…. we’re playing under protest. Oh, and also you all are socialists who want to disarm us and teach our kids to be atheists; if you take back the White House all bets are off! The regime cleavage of Trumpism and the $64,000 question…..“What are you going to do about it?!” BC