GOP Business As Usual: Sedition in the Name of Patriotism

UPDATED:  The front page of the New York Daily News (see image above) gets it right for a change.

Republicans and their Christofascists and Tea Party base talk ad nausea  about patriotism and the rule of law yet are always ready at the drop of a hat to undermine the constitution, seek to nullify judicial decisions and ignore the separation of powers in government if they don't like the result.  All too often such unhappiness stems from their minority positions on issues - e.g., same sex marriage - that are accepted by the majority.  A piece in Washington Monthly looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

On many occasions during the last few years, as I heard talk of secession and nullification, and of defiance of the courts, and of duly enacted statutes representing slavery and tyranny, and of Higher Laws and a Right to Revolution, and most recently, of allegiance to a foreign government—all more or less countenanced by one of our two major political parties—I’ve thought of a historical parallel, as described in one of my favorite books, George Dangerfield’s The Strange Death of Liberal England.
 
The period in question was just prior to World War I when a Liberal majority government committed by mandate and party alliance to Home Rule for Ireland was obstructed by a Tory minority in alliance with Ulster Unionists which explicitly and implicitly threatened civil war.

Sedition in the name of patriotism should sound familiar today. Just over a century ago in England, the seditionists—aptly described by Dangerfield as cynical opportunists in league with sectarian fanatics—won. The country recovered, but was never quite the same. Are we headed in that same direction? 

You have to wonder, as does Paul Waldman today at the Plum Line:

The American political system runs according to a whole series of norms, many of which we don’t notice until they’re violated. For instance, the Speaker of the House can invite a foreign leader to address Congress for the sole purpose of criticizing the administration, and he can even do it without letting the White House know in advance. There’s no law against it. But doing so violates a norm not only of simple respect and courtesy, but one that says that the exercise of foreign policy belongs to the administration. Congress can advise, criticize, and legislate to shape it, but if they simply take it upon themselves to make their own foreign policy, they’ve gone too far.

Republicans seem to have concluded that there is one set of rules and norms that apply in ordinary times, and an entirely different set that applies when Barack Obama is the president. You no longer need to show the president even a modicum of respect. You can tell states to ignore the law. You can sabotage delicate negotiations with a hostile foreign power by communicating directly with that power.

I wonder what they’d say if you asked them whether it would be acceptable for Democrats to treat the next Republican president that way. My guess is that the question wouldn’t even make sense to them. After all, that person would be a Republican. So how could anyone even think of such a thing?