Religious right looks away
No group has been as blindly loyal to President Donald Trump as Christian conservatives. They have not let religion or values get in the way of their support. Consider the Access Hollywood tape, the attack on a Gold Star family, a mass of inexplicable ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials (and the president’s open invitation to Russia to continue hacking), the firing of the FBI director, the humiliation of evangelical favorite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the politicization of the Boy Scouts, the threats to the special counsel, and now an interview with Trump’s out-of-control potty-mouthed communications director. What about Trump, exactly, reflects their values?
Meanwhile the president’s own conduct is so badly out of control that Republicans are finally trying to take efforts to childproof the Justice Department. The Post reports that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) “made clear that he would not consider holding confirmation hearings for a replacement any time this year. That would leave the Justice Department in the hands of Rod J. Rosenstein, the career prosecutor who is now deputy attorney general and someone who also has earned Trump’s disrespect for having appointed [special counsel Robert] Mueller.”
It is not clear whether Trump has reached a tipping point when Republicans decide he has to leave office. Yet if Trump nevertheless proceeds to fire Sessions and then order Justice Department officials to fire Mueller (or fire them if they won’t), Republicans will have no remedy at their disposal other than impeachment; they may very well choose not to use it, but then we have the makings of a constitutional crisis on our hands.
And the religious right, which intones “Judge Gorsuch, Judge Gorsuch!” when confronted with the series of Trump abominations, should do some soul-searching. Was this trashing of the White House, assault on civil language and conduct and contempt for the Constitution (the one the religious right thinks is so important that the new Supreme Court justice must protect it) worth it? And if it gets worse, is there any point at which they might put country above tribe, morality above partisanship?