This AP news item caught my eye today (thanks to Steve Benen):
It’s still six days before Donald Trump is sworn in as president and Sen. Marco Rubio is telling Florida Republicans they have to start working now to make sure he’s re-elected.
Rubio briefly addresses Republicans at the state GOP’s annual meeting Saturday and said Democrats will be working hard to try to take Trump out.
Rubio said, “Re-election has already started.”
One of the key American concepts that differentiated itself from our old masters, the England of King George, and even today from such places as Russia and North Korea, and the basic foundation upon which the all-American word meritocracy is built, is performance. When Americans are at their best, we do not judge based on what we are, such as color of skin, but on how well we do something relevant. Did he run the corporation well, or did he screw over customers, workers, and all in a greedy search for dollars? Did she run the prosecutor’s office in a just, efficient manner, or did she only worry about getting a guilty verdict in every case the police brought her, without regard to justice or even legal ethics?
Trump has no record. Trump has no record. Think about that. He’s never even been a city council member. He hasn’t sat as President for a single day. Yet the GOP is already supposedly planning his re-election. (Of course, this could be a ploy, and the real planning is for his impeachment.) What has happened to this key American concept of evaluating someone’s performance when they request a raise, or to have their contract renewed? It’s been discarded.
But not inexplicably.
My best guess is that the GOP sees the Presidency as a prize, not as the job it is. Something to be put on the mantelpiece, not as four years of hell (but with better prestige), with a single option to renew. My second best guess is that the plague of religious certitude has gripped the vitals of the GOP in its terrible, evil grip; it dictates that only the GOP is good, and the Democrats are evil, and thus the GOP must do all it can to hold the Presidency. By definition, the GOP President will be good.
Because that’s how feverish evangelism works.
And to hell with the United States.
If the GOP wants to be a party worthy of national recognition, it must stop playing idiot games like this and return to a sober, serious quest for learning how to govern. It’s a skill, a job, and very much like pole sitting. If you screw up, you’re going to hurt yourself.
