Almost as substantial a bummer as the elite-friendly policies the GOP appears so eager to pass is its commitment to treating constituents at large like idiots.
Take, for example, the response of the majority of GOP members of Congress to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ apparent connections to Russia and seemingly inexplicable “misleading” denials under oath.
One could characterize the GOP response as:
“No, no. This guy who did not disclose his engagement with the Russian ambassador when asked about it — the one who said people who do exactly this should be removed from office — should definitely oversee an investigation into other administration officials who have done the same.”
Remember, by the way, that it was not even two months ago that Sen. Susan Collins suggested — despite his maintaining a record as a U.S. attorney in Alabama so cumulatively racist that Coretta Scott King once made a plea that he not rise to the level of federal judiciary — we see in Attorney General Sessions his decency. Not long afterward, Sessions lied about his engagement with Russian officials at his confirmation hearing.
Whelp.
Try as they might to distract from the story by throwing gas on it — Trump, for instance, dropping an entirely unsubstantiated claim that his phones may have been tapped, an order from on high, that only adds intrigue surrounding the administration’s commitment to being shady — the GOP, from the top down, is showing its complicity in helping aspiring authoritarians consolidate their hold on power. Meanwhile, those aspiring authoritarians are showing they’re pretty bad at elegantly seizing power.
Just last week The Indianapolis Star reported that “Vice President Mike Pence routinely used a private email account to conduct public business as governor of Indiana, at times discussing sensitive matters and homeland security issues.” And Pence’s email account was actually hacked last summer.
You will recall, of course, that, based on her use of a private server, Pence called Hillary Clinton “the most dishonest presidential candidate in decades.” So the “lock her up!” chanters — the ones who totally weren’t giving Clinton a hard time because she is a woman — should be outraged with Pence for both his transgression and his reliance on the stupidity of his base.
Between Russia and AOL email accounts, everyone connected to this administration has been shown to have so much poorly concealed blood on their hands that a collective downfall appears built into their makeup. It makes you wonder why they wanted to take power so literally when paying for political influence has long been at once as lucrative as it is easy.
Speaking of buying and selling power, it’s not just a national phenomenon: Don’t forget that a handful of Maine GOP lawmakers are members of ALEC, an industry-funded group that writes legislation on behalf of business interests. That so-called swamp the president supposedly drained by replacing it with even more affluent corporatists trickles all the way down, apparently.
It reminds me of Republican Rep. Jeb “the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau must go” Hensarling, and the fact that Hensarling’s top donors are Bank of America, Rent-A-Center and other financial services companies.
It reminds of the GOP enjoying press attention for talking about jobs, and every existential threat to them aside from automation — the one that is most ominous. And of the party’s move to redistribute tax revenues to speed up that automation in the name of “saving” jobs. It’s no secret that the Republican Party is brazenly committed to corporate autocracy, and, increasingly, that its members are totally fine looking the other way as it concerns this sloppy grab for power.
What they are becoming more brazen about is the fact that they believe their constituencies to be both lazy and stupid, and that is almost — almost — as offensive as the policies upon which their house of cards appears to be built.
Alex Steed has written about and engaged in politics since he was a teenager. He’s an owner-partner of a Portland-based content production company and lives with his family, dogs and garden in Cornish.