Tuesday, September 04, 2018

Congressional Republicans: Unindicted Co-conspirators in Trump Crimes


Following up on what Megan McCain only hinted at is a piece in New York Magazine which, in my view, accurately calls out Congressional Republicans as unindicted co-conspirators in the many crimes of Donald Trump - an by extension, Mike Pence who smilingly goes along with every Trump outrage as he positions himself for power should Trump be impeached or die of aneurysm during one of his screaming rants.  Instead of oversight of the occupant of the Oval Office as designed by the U.S. Constitution, we now see what most charitably might be called enablers and at worst co-conspirators in a scheme to undermine the Constitution itself.  All is part and parcel with the Republican Party's descent into moral bankruptcy and behavior reminiscent of conservative Germans who thought they could control Hitler (the only difference is that those Germans still wanted the rule of law whereas today's Republicans seemingly do not)..   Here are article excerpts:

After John McCain’s death, as official Washington set its flags at half-staff, Chuck Schumer proposed another kind of tribute to the iconic senator and war hero: that the Russell Senate Office Building, currently named for a segregationist southern Democrat, be renamed for McCain. His Republican colleagues, however, demurred.
They could not admit that their real reason for opposing the honor was that McCain had crossed Trump. Nor could they defend Senator Richard Russell’s ardent white supremacy, which extended to denouncing laws to ban lynching. Instead, they flailed about, inventing pretexts on the fly.
What was at stake in this absurd stance was something large: Donald Trump was once again demanding a display of submission from his party. And once again, he received it. As in a Stalinist show trial, the preposterousness of the statements made them more rather than less valuable. Senate Republicans demonstrated their willingness to turn on a colleague out of fealty to Trump, and all the better for him that they did so out of transparent fear rather than conviction. . . . Whatever restraining force Trump’s party exerted against him has now almost completely dissipated.
Take, for instance, the election-security bill both parties worked together to craft this summer. The measure would have given top state election officials security clearances to view warnings about hacking threats, convened a technical advisory board to share best practices, and increased the use of paper ballots that could be checked in case of a hack, along with other steps that are both obviously needed and just as obviously unobjectionable. But the White House came out against the bill, so Republicans dutifully paused work on it. 
Senate Republicans have likewise all but abandoned the wall of defense they had once maintained around Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Trump demands and expects the attorney general to gin up criminal charges against Trump’s enemies while ignoring misdeeds by Trump and his allies. [Trump] The president told an interviewer, “The only reason I gave him the job [is] I felt loyalty.”
What has prevented Trump from firing Sessions until now were the quiet warnings from the attorney general’s former Republican Senate colleagues that they would refuse to confirm a successor.
A recent list circulated by congressional Republicans to members of their party demonstrates the degree to which Trump’s party has internalized its role as enabler of [Trum's] the president’s misconduct. Republicans have used their majority in Congress to quash almost any oversight of the administration. The list tallied all the scandals and acts of gross incompetence that Democrats would like to investigate if they win control of at least one chamber of Congress. The point of this impressive litany of scandals was not to show that Republicans have abdicated their basic responsibilities or that the public has a right to information about which business interests directly pay the president and his family, exactly which sources of blackmail he is vulnerable to, and so on. The point was to help Republicans warn their own side what might come to light if Democrats win the midterms. The prospect of Congress acting independently has “churned Republican stomachs,” Axios notes. That the GOP should or could restrain Trump’s corruption has become unfathomable.
As Republicans’ scant interest in inhibiting Trump has waned, his authoritarianism has grown more uninhibited. He threatened Google with unspecified consequences unless it tweaks its algorithm to drive readers toward more pro-Trump stories. He has edged closer to issuing a pardon of Paul Manafort as a reward for his former campaign manager’s refusal to cooperate with prosecutors. And he ranted in a meeting with leaders from the Christian right that antifa will launch violent attacks against them unless Republicans win in the midterms.
And he has increased the frequency of his Lenin-esque charges that the parts of the news media his party does not control are the “enemy of the people.”
Trump’s latest maniacal outburst coincided with — and was likely caused by — the deepening investigations. . . . . As Trump plunges deeper into his war against the rule of law, the Republican Congress marches along beside him, unindicted co-conspirators all.

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