The Grand Old Pole Dance Party

Republicans are shedding so many issues, they're down to their g-strings and pasties

The way Republicans are reacting to Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, it’s like they’re pole dancers at the end of the night, stumbling around the stage in cheap heels, picking up their deficit panties and  budget bras.  It would be amusing if it weren’t so pathetic.  I didn’t know hypocrisy came in spandex, Mitch!  It looks so fetching on you!  What was it the Republicans’ Gang of Ten said when they carried McConnell’s water to President Biden with their $600 billion so-called counter proposal?  Suddenly, they’re reaching for their compromise costume. 

Republicans start calling for unity and bipartisanship every time they lose political control.  When they’re in power, they couldn’t find a deficit they cared about if you slapped them in the face with it.  But let the Democrats take the White House and congress, and Republicans are all about fiscal responsibility and penny pinching, as long as you don’t pinch the billions being pocketed by their mega-donors as they laugh all the way to the bank with their $2 trillion tax cuts.

Bi-partisanship and unity is for suckers when Republicans have the reins, but let the Democrats start using their power, and they get all indignant.  To think those nasty Democrats are talking about using budget reconciliation to pass their giveaways to the poor.  Well, I never!  But it’s fine when they’re cutting taxes on the rich.

What’s new this time are the other issues the Republicans are walking away from.  They’re treating the attack on the Capitol like it happened to someone else in some other zone of reality.  They spent the last four years screaming “blue lives matter” at the top of their lungs in reaction to protests by Black Lives Matter, but when a mob of their own people wearing MAGA hats waving Trump flags attacks Capitol police and three cops die, suddenly blue lives aren’t as important as Trump’s phony voter fraud fantasies.  More than 80 injured cops were being treated at local hospitals on the night of January 6 at the same time 139 Republicans stood up in congress and objected to the certification of electoral ballots from Arizona and Pennsylvania. That’s how much blue lives mattered to Republicans when they were trying to overturn the election for Donald Trump.  

It’s the same with the issue of national security, long a stronghold of Republican politics.  They never met a defense budget they didn’t want to throw money at.  The Pentagon asks for 70 F-35 fighters?  We’ll give them 100!  Planes budgeted at $75 million a copy are actually going to cost $110 million?  Who cares!  The Navy wants another aircraft carrier?  Hell, let’s send them money enough for two!    

Then comes their hero Donald Trump, and he gives away the store to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, and Republicans are fine with it.  He wants to pull half the American troops out of Germany?  Why not!  Trump trashes NATO every chance he gets, playing directly into the hands of Russia?  That nasty NATO costs us too much anyway.  Let’s save money and cut more taxes.

The way they’re shedding issues, Republicans are going to end up with the three G’s:  God, Guns, and Gays.  Which is where they were last summer, come to think of it.  Remember the Republican National Convention?  Here is their platform, the whole thing:  “The Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the president’s America-first agenda.”  Nothing about what his agenda was. His party didn’t know what issues he stood for and didn’t care, because there wasn’t anything left of the party but Donald Trump himself.

What they failed to count on was Trump losing.  Without him, they aren’t merely rudderless, they’re sunk.  Can you imagine being a Republican “leader” in Washington today?  What is there for you to do?  Get up in the morning and sit around and listen for emanations from Mar a Lago?  Well, except for his whining about impeachment as “the greatest witch hunt the world has ever seen,” all they’ve heard from Donald Trump is a lame threat to retaliate against every Republican who dared vote against him.

Watching the Republican Party cope with its post-Trump hangover is like walking into a strip club after closing when they throw on the overhead lights.  There it is in its tawdry glory: the peeling “gold” leaf that isn’t gold, the tattered “curtains” the “girls” emerge from behind, the worn-out “leather” of the red plastic booths, the tables cluttered with empty glasses of “cocktails” poured with watered-down cheap booze…

All that’s missing are the married guys walking to their cars in the parking lot, slipping their wedding rings back on their fingers, trying to come up with excuses for why that sales meeting ran so late.

Republicans all, every last one of them.