Crooks Or Cowards? In the Age of trump for Republicans It Is Both

There was a bombshell today when the New York Times - still the "official paper" of record despite their many sins against journalism - issued an Op-Ed written by "A Senior Official within trump's White House," arguably someone within the inner circle (or on the Orient Express train during a snowstorm, if you want the list of suspects figured out) venting about the damage control the "sane" Republicans have had to do since Day One of the Shitgibbon Era.

To refer to the sanity patrol like Cheryl Rofer over at Balloon-Juice:

While I take a measure of relief that we now appear to be closer to the beginning of the end than to the end of the beginning, I have some big concerns about that New York Times op-ed by “a senior administration official.”

My concerns are very much like David Frum’s...

But the author is trying to preserve his/her reputation: I am being a good Republican, helping to execute good Republican policies. I am keeping the country safe from a dangerous president.

That’s a lot of responsibility to take on. The president is elected; the author has been appointed by that president and tells us that he is undermining that president. In the telling, the president is further undermined.

What did the author expect to be the next step? Donald Trump is reported to have freaked out over the Woodward revelations and have started searching for the leakers. This will turbocharge that search. James Jesus Angleton became convinced that there was a Russian mole in the CIA and practically destroyed the agency. Can the author of the op-ed protect us from a storm a couple of categories stronger..?

I'm with Cheryl on this regarding the Cover-Your-Ass aspect of this article: The person writing it is not doing so out of concern for the nation's well-being, it's a signal to other Republicans that there are people in trump's White House making sure the madman doesn't go on a Nuke Tirade. This isn't serving the Republic: This is protecting the Republicans.

While the Handlers in the West Wing keep trump under control (barely), the Republicans in Congress can happily continue their own agendas of tax cuts, filling judicial seats with arch-conservatives who can serve for another 30-40 years, and suppressing voters rights to ensure gerrymandered control of the House for another decade. Neither the House nor the Senate ever have to fear facing the political consequences of doing SOMETHING to investigate trump with their oversight powers.

This is where the cowardice of the Republicans hiding in the shadows become criminal. The Republicans indulge as crooks with unearned and unjustified political power they do not deserve to wield. Like all crooks, they're taking for themselves and leaving the suckers (U.S. voters) in the dust.

And in this cowardice they are committing the greatest crime of all: violating their Oaths of Office to serve the public trust and save us from unfit leaders.

Referring to Frum's article in The Atlantic:

If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.

What happens the next time a staffer seeks to dissuade the president from, say, purging the Justice Department to shut down the Mueller investigation? The author of the Times op-ed has explicitly told the president that those who offer such advice do not have the president’s best interests at heart, and are, in fact, actively subverting his best interests as he understands them on behalf of ideas of their own.

He’ll grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous...

There is an honest debate right now if that was the writer's intent: Force trump into a rash action, create a crisis beyond anyone's control...

What would be better?

Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections...

Until a Republican leader - one with genuine gravitas and political power that can withstand the ruthless attacks of the trump voter base that is bound to hit him - steps up like that and FINALLY calls out not just trump but every GODDAMN ENABLER responsible for the disaster we are now in, this is not going to help.

For all the times I dreaded a full meltdown and never really got one, I think this time... this is it.

GODS HELP US.