The Moment of Truth Has Arrived for Republicans

A column in the Washington Post calls on Republicans working in and abetting the Trump/Pence regime to resign and save themselves and, hopefully, the nation. I would argue that this same moment of truth has arrived for Republicans up and down the political spectrum to make a choice.  Either (i) the United States and its Constitution and democracy are placed first, or (ii) subservience to Trump and the selling out of America to an enemy foreign power are embraced by Republicans.  There really is no middle ground given Trump's seeming commission of treason as defined by the United States Code.  If Republicans fail to act, they will be complicit in every crime and act of treason by Donald Trump - and his feckless puppet, Mike Pence. I have at times referred to "Vichy Republicans" likening them to the French who collaborated with Hitler and held positions on the fake Vichy French government.  Now, these parallels are real.  Republicans either rein in - or preferably jettison - Trump/Pence and their sycophants and hold them accountable or they are just as guilty as the Vichy French when it collaborated with the Nazis.  A piece in The Atlantic makes this argument.  Here are excerpts: 

There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.

Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.

Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not  realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.

Conscious tool. Useful idiot. Those are the choices, though both are possibly true, so that the main question is the proportions.

Trump’s answers were indistinguishable from Putin’s, starting with the fundamental claim that Putin’s assurances about interference in U.S. democracy (“He was incredibly strong and confident in his denial”) deserved belief over those of his own Department of Justice . . . .

I am old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon telling lies on TV, about Vietnam in both cases, and Watergate for Nixon. I remember the travails and deceptions of Bill Clinton, and of George W. Bush in the buildup to the disastrous Iraq War.

But never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people. Trump manifestly cannot help himself. This is who he is.

Those who could do something are the 51 Republican senators and 236 Republican representatives who have the power to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, pass resolutions of censure, guarantee the integrity of Robert Mueller’s investigation, condemn the past Russian election interference, shore up protections against the next assault, and in general defend their country rather than the damaged and defective man who is now its president.

For 18 months, members of this party have averted their eyes from Trump, rather than disturb the Trump elements among their constituency or disrupt the party’s agenda on tax cuts and the Supreme Court. They already bear responsibility for what Trump has done to his office.

But with every hour that elapses after this shocking performance in Helsinki without Republicans doing anything, the more deeply they are stained by this dark moment in American leadership.

If Republicans remain Trump's lap dogs, it is imperative that true patriots get registered to vote and go to the polls in November, 2018, and vote against any and every Republican possible. We need a popular uprising to take back America from the false patriots who will have placed Trump and Russia over their country.  The GOP must literally be destroyed if it remains complicit in treason.