The Party of Bad Faith

When did I stop taking seriously the arguments of the Republicans?  Hard to remember now, but I have taken to calling them the Party of Bad Faith.  Why?  Because they are consistently making arguments that are baldy hypocritical.  The arguments they wield to excuse Trump during the impeachment hearings are exactly the opposite of what they argued when Clinton (Bill) was the target.  McConnell has already said that the supposed Garland rule about not letting a Supreme Court nominee be considered during an election year will not apply with Trump as President.  We can go and on.

The point is that the naked pursuit of power and the ruthless burning down of the norms of democratic governance has got to have consequences.  One of them is that I no longer both to think or say "well, if Obama had done that ..."  Why?  Because it mattered not what Obama did--they were determined to defeat him at every turn.  Democracy requires accepting the loss of power, and not burn everything down.  It also requires that winners don't use the system to destroy the competition.  Threatening to prosecute opponents is not the way to govern.  Perhaps the US would have been better off if Obama had give the signal for his Justice Department to prosecute those who enabled torture and did other awful things.  Little did he know that his successor would burn down the entire system, I guess.

With Devon Nunes, who has acted more on behalf of Trump and Russia than as an overseer, seeking to undermine the process, my take is that these Republicans and their whiny complaints about injustice should largely be ignored.  Playing to them to make the process appear to be fair is a waste of effort as they will always find ways to criticize it.  Just follow the procedures, vote on the articles, have the trial in the Senate, and then Trump will get off.  He will be tarnished by the effort, as his crimes will be apparent to those who are not blind.  The GOP will be tarnished by selling out any and all principles and making arguments entirely in bad faith.  It will not affect the diehards, and Fox will cover it as biasedly as it can.

Basically, this rant is: screw those guys. They have chosen party over country.  They are the Party of Bad Faith.  Let them wear that and let us not waste our time trying to persuade them that they need to be less hypocritical.