#WhatTheyVotedFor: "Forgotten children, conform a new faith: Avidity and lust, controlled by hate."
Maybe Democrats are that shortsighted, that they would give up executive power simply because they didn't agree with EVERYTHING the candidate espoused.
You know, this isn't hemming and hawing on gay marriage when the political outline is clear, circa 2008. Nor is this a question of how a Blue Dog Democrat might feel about a president saying a circuit court decision is a good enough reason to not defend DoMA, circa 2011.
Nor is this a question of reading too much or not enough about prejudice into a politician's gaffe about women or dark skin. It's not even about being such a prig as to whip it out in order to try to make some sort of point about transgender.
This time it was clear. This wasn't complicated arguments over the suggestions and significance of something Republicans could try arguing was an overhyped obscurity.
This time it was obvious.
And they're okay with it. Either because it's actually
#WhatTheyVotedFor or merely something they're willing to inflict on their society because, you know, pizza and email and Goldman Sachs,
oh, my!
Seriously, Republicans, with all willing deliberation, answered the first black president and the prospect of the first female president with a supremacist, boasting sexual assailant. There wasn't any mystery.
And, so, yeah. There are a bunch of the so-called "deplorables", and the only question is whether Trump's degree of incompetence is
#WhatTheyVotedFor, but what about the rest? What about the ones who have this or that reason, and everything else, well, it's not that they
support or
condone that kind of thing, it's just that it's okay with them as long as they think they will get what they want out of the deal, and when they don't it's not their fault, anyway, because it was more important to stop someone who wasn't a
supremacist with the appearance of being in thrall to the Russian government.
This time, the, "I don't like it, but ...", bloc that supported Donald Trump has
precisely no excuse under the sun. They own this as much as the supremacists and the lulzies.
#WhyIThrewInWithBadPeople just isn't going to be a popular Twitter trend among Republican voters, but it would probably work better than making excuses.
The problem is that it's a lot like asking voters in my state's Fifth Congressional District to run with,
#WhyIVotedForABirther. Was a time when there seemed to be reasons for backing politicians tainted by supremacism and superstition. Was a time when part of the rationale included the question of how much damage the occasional wingnut could do because it's not like, you know, Jesse Helms ever got his return to segregation.
Was a time when the white working-class voter could back union-busting and supply-side economics, international trade deals, or a war on drugs that left addiction to the penal system and just happened to accidentally work out to look just like the racist scheme everyone thought it was, and apparently their excuse was that they really didn't know.
And, yes, it is possible to oppose policies, like the ACA, as Republicans did, no matter how ignorant and ridiculous the conservative backlash will look when future generations survey the historical record of the period. So, yeah. Backing the fourth most powerful person in the House, who happens to come from your district and is the most powerful woman in that chamber? There are plenty of reasons to vote for the Birther if you're a Fifth District Republican.
But backing Rep. McMorris Rodgers is akin to backing any local, puerile, Republican alternative to functioning government. That is to say, it's what passes for politics as usual in order to accommodate Republican needs.
Voting for Donald Trump, just given the fact of his strident, martial talk compounding his blatant bigotry and boasts of sexual assault, isn't really a question of compromising because one somehow sincerely believes Republicans have a clue what they're on about when it comes to health care (ACA replacement?), or educational standards (Common Core replacement?), or law enforcement ("Ferguson effect"?), or ... what? Watching Republicans scramble to find a way to line up behind President Trump would be funny if it was slapstick, but this isn't fiction.
This wasn't just a vote against Hillary Clinton, or the ACA, or black people or Muslims or whatever. This was a vote against the very idea of America. This was a vote against the Reaganite shining city on the hill. This was a vote against Liberty and Justice for All. And, you know, sure, so that's not this or that voter, but they're okay with it because it's worth whatever else they want for their own satisfaction, and, you know, whatever. It's not admirable. They aren't trustworthy. They're greedy and selfish, and I couldn't tell you whether genuine antisocial outcomes, or mere ignorance to the point of being insensate, is the more or less comforting explanation for what we're seeing.
This time it was extraordinary; the resulting circumstance is extraordinary; continued endorsement of that circumstance verges on the realm of extraordinary, but also up against the boundary of civilized function itself. Civilized society, generally speaking, is not a suicide pact; our Constitution, it is likewise
explicitly declared, both in its appeal to our posterity and the record by which we have sought to establish justice.
Still, though, we get it:
Something was just that important.
And in this case, such an appeal is also a manner of moral self-indictment.
