The entire Republican agenda is built on an enormous mountain of lies and misinformation, so calling out Trump for being a lying dickhead without also condemning the agenda of their own party is a clear indication that they’re totally fine with spreading lies and misinformation. They’d maybe just prefer that they not be emanating from the mouth of a tantrum-prone man-child with a finger on the button of a massive nuclear arsenal, because it makes them look bad, not because they have a fundamental dedication to decency and good governance. And I guess because it’s hard to cut taxes for the richest people and corporations on the planet when they’re nothing but radioactive piles of ash.
I refuse to give Corker any credit for coming out against Trump now, because he was on this train from the start, knew what we would be getting, and hoped he could unleash the whirlwind without getting reaped by it. Flake at least had the good sense to see what Trump was and oppose his nomination, but he’s still more devoted to his party than his country because his problem seems to be more with Trump’s tone than with the actual ridiculous lies and bullshit spewing unceasingly from his face hole, as evidenced by his ongoing devotion to the provably absurdist agenda underlying them. And I’m also not going to give McCain any credit, because a) he lined up with the rest of his party to endorse, vote for, and/or refuse to consistently condemn Trump both before and after he secured the nomination, and b) like Flake, his frustrations have been with the tone of Republican governance, not the substance. During the ACA repeal debates, his problem was never that the bills were flaming dumpster trash fires visible from nearby solar systems which were built on a bone palace of blatant lies and doublespeak that would intentionally kill thousands of people and destroy the lives of tens of thousands more. Rather, he was mad because the way the bill was drafted and brought to the floor of the Senate didn’t meet his standard for acceptable adherence to parliamentary procedure. Had Mitch McConnell actually had the patience or competence to follow regular order when trying to pass his toilet-slurpee of a bill, I can pretty much guarantee you that it would have gotten McCain’s seal of approval, and we’d be staring down the barrel of a hell of a lot more than deliberate enrollment sabotage and an executive order to terminate insurance subsidies right now.
These men are not good people. They are either willfully ignorant of the devastation their party’s agenda will create despite the incessant stream of reality-based evidence flung at them to inform them of that fact, or they’re fully aware that what they’re doing is phenomenally destructive, but they don’t care because it won’t impact them directly. And I know it’s an incredible sacrilegious offense to say that a Vietnam War veteran and POW is a bad person, especially because John McCain told that racist old lady at a town hall that Barack Obama wasn’t an Arab that one time, but the man has been complicit in the ongoing radicalization of his party for the better part of three decades now, and arguably accelerated it through his 2008 campaign for president. I have a certain amount of sympathy for everyday voters who are complicit in the Republican Party’s slow-motion self-immolation because they’ve put their faith in a set of authority figures who have gone on to lie to their faces, but McCain, Corker, and Flake are the people who have been doing the lying, and in Corker and Flake’s cases they’re second-generation bullshit artists who bought the lies of the authority figures who came before them and got themselves voted into office to perpetuate the cycle (whether out of ignorance or malice doesn’t really matter at this point).
To the extent that they’re willing to help railroad Trump out of office before the blatant corruption and incompetence he brought with him destroys the executive branch from within, I welcome their assistance. But aside from Strongly Worded Statements Of Disapproval, none of these men have done anything with the power in their possession to advance that cause or actually stop the spread of Trump’s corruption by opposing the people he nominates, and two of them have now publicly declared their intention to abandon ship in 18 months. Until they start taking measurable steps to put the brakes on Trump’s exploitation of governmental power and renounce their party’s Stupid Orwell* policy agenda, I’m not interested in anything else they have to say.
*It’s like Stupid Watergate, but for authoritarian governance.
