A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY

Apparently the Democratic-controlled state legislature of New York gets to appoint a temporary replacement for Eric Schneiderman.  There are a lot of reasons why it won’t happen, but it would be hilarious if they appointed Hillary Clinton to serve out Schneiderman’s term.  Failing that, I hope they choose Preet Bharara, whom Trump fired from his job as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York back in March, 2017. 

Republicans who are inclined to gloat over Schneiderman should compare Schneiderman’s swift resignation to, for instance, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, who clings to power despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt.  Or compare Al Franken’s exit to Roy Moore’s. 

Democrats have their share of bad actors, but they don’t cling to them the way Republicans do.  Most Republicans believe that ends justify the means.  That sort of cynicism is how you end up defending Donald Trump.

Yesterday (before the Schneiderman news broke), New Republic writer Jeet Heer made an interesting point about the GOP’s run of bad apples.  He argues that Trump is far from being an outlier.  He is, instead, the latest in a long line of Republican scofflaws – for example, Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, Oliver North, Dick Cheney, and Sarah Palin, to name but a few.  Donald Trump is simply harvesting the fruit from seeds that his party has been planting since World War II.

Heer identifies the root of the problem is as a Republican rejection of “the rule of law” in favor of a fetish for “law and order,” with order being more important to them than law. 

I’d take his point a step further and observe that the “order” Republicans want to preserve has nothing to do with safe streets and neighborhoods.  Republicans are fighting for a much older order – one in which authority resides with wealthy white men.  “Order” means patriarchy and white supremacy, covered with a veneer of right-wing Christianity. 

Contemporary Republican leaders have a deep disdain for democracy, and they are no longer trying to hide it.  And the truth is, most Republican voters seem to be attracted to authoritarians, demagogues, and even outright thugs.  People who argue that the Republican Party will return to respectability once Trump is gone are kidding themselves.  As long as their candidate is white and willing to demonize minorities, it doesn’t matter to Republican voters whether he’s smart, competent, or even honest.  A non-trivial percentage of Republicans are happy to support liars, thieves, adulterers, and even child molesters, as long as there’s an (R) next to their names.