For the past 6 and half
months, #45 has been the principal resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the
District of Columbia. For more than a year and a half before that, he was a
candidate for the highest political office in the world. During that entire
period, more than 2 years total, he and his supporters, surrogates, and
spinners have actively engaged in moving the goal posts with regard to facts,
truth, and even science.
Time after time over the past
couple of years I have engaged individuals in conversation that firmly believe
that just as he says he’s going to, Trump is indeed, Making America Great
Again. Right out of the gate, I concede I am among the first to admit, I
sincerely doubt that, it is not just that overarching claim that repulses me,
it is the methodical underlying narratives that I find so vexing.
His surrogates and spinners
have constructed a pair of cutesy phrases to explain Team Trump’s bogus
propositions, and to otherwise defend the ruses that reflect the schemes and
conspiracy theories they love to promote…all apparently designed to deflect
attention from the many preposterous positions and actions this administration
has taken. The two terms I referenced above, fake news and alternative facts,
are the exclamation points his acolytes use to attenuate and downgrade any
political or policy arguments that do not align with Trumpology.
Until recently, despite the
frequency and volume of instances which reason would ordinarily dictate a pause
is in order, Team Trump’s position has been to soldier on despite facts,
despite science, and sadly, despite countervailing truth. Alas, slowly, but
surely, there may just be a glimmer of hope. Last week, in the face of a full
court press by the Trump Administration, the GOP Senate leadership, and the
vast majority of its rank and file members, Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and John McCain (R-Arizona)
joined forces to create what journalists deemed a dramatic moment in the U.S. Senate.
This
trio of Republicans pushed back against conservative GOP orthodoxy and joined
with the Senate’s 48 Democrats to prevent passage of what was euphemistically
called the skinny repeal of Obamacare, a cynical bit of legislation that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sought
to squeeze through in the middle of the night without significant debate or
review. The bill was ultimately voted down after 1:00 a.m. last Friday morning.
Senator McCain, noted as a maverick in his
Party, came back to Washington 11 days after surgery to remove a blood clot
during which it was determined he had a brain tumor known as a glioblastoma.
In his initial vote after returning, he voted to allow the skinny repeal to be
debated. In doing so, he gave a speech that seemed to presage his eventual vote
on the actual bill. At least, that’s how it turned out. McCain cast the pivotal
vote, and has garnered much of the resulting attention for dealing the ultimate death knell
to the bill. Yet, Collins and Murkowski merit equal billing for their late
night and early morning work. Had any one of the three defected, the 49-51 vote
would have been 50-50, and Vice President Pence would have cast the deciding
vote to push the bill over the top.
So,
fast-forward to this week. This past Monday, a politician wrote in an op-ed for
Politico Magazine. In the piece he said:
“To
carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything
approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties,
and tremendous powers of denial.”
Absent any inside baseball knowledge about
the above referenced op-ed, especially given the preamble about Team Trump
talking points, a logical conclusion is that, at the very least, the op-ed
writer is a Democrat. However, that was not the case. In fact, said writer is
not only a politician, but also a Republican politician. Moreover, he is a U.S.
Senator.
Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) penned the
op-ed. It was essentially an essay, excerpted from his new book, entitled,
“Conscience of a Conservative,” released yesterday. In it, he argues that the
GOP was responsible for making Trump a phenomenon of national proportion when
it opted to vehemently oppose President Obama at every turn. Flake stated
expressly:
“It
was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and
sustained attacks on Obama’s legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who
would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us.”
I have argued relentlessly that the impetus
for the largely otherwise inexplicable Trump love fest is the raging anti-Obama
sentiment held by a key political and ideological segment of the country. I believe without question, there were a number of issues that contributed to
the Trump victory, including Mrs. Clinton’s flaws, Wikileaks, James Comey, and
Russia. None of them, however, in my opinion, was more impactful that the 8
years of GOP inspired and executed anti-Obama tactics and strategies. Even
today, more than half a year into the Trump era, it is common for his
supporters to hearken back to President Obama as a standard point of deflection
for spates of contemporary Trump Madness. Flake’s op-ed/essay underscores my
argument in spades, as he states the following:
“But
we conservatives mocked Barack Obama’s failure to deliver on his pledge to
change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It
was conservatives who, upon Obama’s election, stated that our No. 1 priority
was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term
president – the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would
be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out
in the meantime. It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most
egregious and sustained attacks on Obama’s legitimacy were leveled by marginal
figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It
was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional
prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the
White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump
presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued.”
In another passage, Senator Flake quotes
conservative columnist, Michael Gerson, who wrote in May:
“The
conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased,” and
conservative institutions “with the blessings of a president…have abandoned the
normal constraints of reason and compassion.”
On many occasions I have explained in minute
detail the numerous reasons why I think Trump Season will last at least 4
years, and not inconceivably 8 years. While the actions of these four Senators
do not raise my level of optimism for a shortened term, I have allowed myself
to hope for an elevated level of accountability. We will see.
So remember, while it’s uncertain whether
these actions will permanently change the course of history, they are
important. Better than that, they just
might…”Newsflash: Four GOP Senators Do/Say The RightThing!”
I’m done; holla back!
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