When a dog wants to show submissiveness, he lays down on his back and shows you his belly.
When a politician wants to show submissiveness, he gets on a plane, flies to Florida and meets with Donald Trump at his cheesy country club.
As William Faulkner once said, the past isn’t dead.
It isn’t even past.
The only thing we know for sure is that American voters have a very short attention span. It was earlier this month when the Trumpanzees attacked the U.S. Capitol with mayhem and murder on their minds, and Trump’s Legion of the Poorly Educated is already urging us to get over it and move on.
Politicians who gained a little bit of courage right after the insurrection and said Trump was responsible have since backed down. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California might be the worst of them, shifting from blaming Trump to saying everyone was to blame.
That’s right, anyone. That means you and me and that guy behind a tree.
It is almost incomprehensible to understand how craven Republicans in Congress have become. Oh, not all of them. Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene aren’t afraid. The events of January 6th suited them perfectly. I don’t think any of them and others like them would have shed a tear if the crowds shouting “Hang Mike Pence” had caught the vice president and succeeded in lynching him.
The 10 House Republicans who showed enough courage to vote to impeach Trump are all under attack, including Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Cheney is a pretty solid conservative and of course the daughter of a former vice president.
“Dan Quayle?”
“No, not Dan Quayle.”
She is the third ranking Republican in the House, almost certainly the leading woman in the GOP, and Trump has already said he will support a primary challenger against her next year.
“Nelson Rockefeller?”
“No, not Nelson Rockefeller.”
Trump must have been thrilled to know McCarthy was seeking an audience. After all that Putin put him through in their meetings, I’m pretty sure Trump was happy to be on the other side of the Tower of Power. At least he appears to have done the most humiliating stuff to McCarthy in private.
The only thing I wonder is how long it took McCarthy to show his belly.
“Dick Cheney?”
“Finally. Why did it take you so long?”
“I didn’t think of him as the vice president.”
Neither did he. The one thing I know about Cheney is that Trump would never see his belly.
They don’t make Republicans like they once did.