Hypocrisy

[Pete F.]

I come before you, my friends, to defend Republicans against charges that they are unprincipled, two-faced hypocrites.
Pointy-headed coastal elitists, with all sorts of useless book learning that real Americans don’t need, have been arguing that when it comes to impeachment, the POT (that’s Party of Trump) is calling the kettle black. They accuse the Republicans of inconsistency and insincerity in ways that go far beyond a Republican member of Congress who was once arrested for drunk driving bringing up the fact that a crack pipe was once found in a car rented by Hunter Biden.
Here’s what the usual suspects — you know, the human scum, traitors and enemies of the people — are saying. They point out that Republicans fervently denounce the mythical Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and then turn around and argue that President Trump has the right — nay, the obligation — to demand Ukrainian interference in the 2020 election.
These globalist clowns note that some of the very same Republicans who now accuse Democrats of wanting to impeach Trump from the start were intent on impeaching President Barack Obama from the start. National Review writer Andrew McCarthy, now a stalwart defender of Trump, once wrote a book called “Faithless Execution: Building the Case for Obama’s Impeachment.” He even advocated the impeachment of Hillary Clinton before the 2016 election.
Some lightweight, very low I.Q. individuals even have the audacity to point out that the Republicans who now think that compliance with House subpoenas is strictly optional once held Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with House subpoenas. In 2012, then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R.-S.C.) sternly said, “The notion that you could withhold information and documents from Congress no matter whether you’re the party in power or not in power is wrong.” This year, Gowdy is singing a different tune: “Congress as a coequal branch of government can ask for whatever they want to ask for,” the former congressman told Fox News. “Now it doesn’t mean you have to show up, and it doesn’t mean you have to talk, and it doesn’t mean you have to produce documents.”
No Republican has been as widely mocked by the losers and haters as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), one of the House impeachment managers during the Senate trial of Bill Clinton in 1999. Today, he says: “A sad, ridiculous sham in the U.S. House of Representatives. This needs to come to a quick end.” Back then he was urging the “ladies and gentlemen of the United States Senate” to “have a trial in its true sense of the word.” Back then, too, Graham said, “You do not even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines that your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role.” Now Republicans argue that Trump can’t be impeached because he isn’t accused of a crime.
One Republican even contends that it’s “really sad” to see Democrats trying to impeach Trump “on the eve of Christmas.” That would be former speaker Newt Gingrich, who led House Republicans in impeaching Bill Clinton six days before Christmas 1998.
Oh, I know this looks bad. It looks like Republicans have no principles and no core beliefs. But there you are wrong, my friends. They do have a principle. Here it is: Whatever helps the Republican Party is good. Whatever hurts the Republican Party is bad. To understand the modern GOP, you don’t have to study unitary executive theory, supply-side economics, Burkean philosophy or anything else. All you have to do is remember those 14 words.
Once you understand that is Republicans’ sole philosophy, everything else clicks into place. It explains how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.) could refuse to grant Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing because 2016 was an election year while readily admitting that if there is a Supreme Court vacancy in 2020, “Oh we’d fill it.” It explains how Republicans could excoriate “King Obama” for ruling by executive order and yet vote to uphold Trump’s decision to declare a “state of emergency” so he could spend money on a border wall that Congress didn’t appropriate. It explains why Attorney General William P. Barr can advocate nearly unlimited presidential power when Republicans are under attack but not when Democratic presidents are being targeted.
Logic, fact, morality, legality, ideology: All of it is irrelevant in understanding the Party of Trump. Republicans have made crystal clear that nothing matters to them other than partisanship. And if you don’t like it, that’s probably a sign that you have an “anger management problem.” You should, Trump suggests, “chill.” Or, as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says, “Get over it.” Because they’re not changing, no matter how embarrassing and ridiculous their reversals become in the eyes of the “Radical Left, Do Nothing Dems” and the “Fake News Media.”
Max Boot OpEd in the WaPo