Hey, Connecticut GOP, are you seeing this?
Maybe I missed it.
That’s gotta be it.
I’m busy. There’s a lot of news. I probably just missed the statement issued by one or more Connecticut Republican politicians Monday after President Donald Trump barked at the nation’s governors for refusing to use the military as an “occupying force” and then used federal forces to hit peaceful protesters with gas and rubber bullets and good old-fashioned clobbering.
I’m sure somebody said something. Hello? Operator!
Even the Episcopalians condemned this. Trump used violence to visit their church. A priest and a seminarian were both gassed while washing out the eyes of gassed protesters driven up onto the church patio.
The rector of the church, and then the bishop of the diocese and the presiding bishop of the denomination all rebuked Trump in unambiguous terms. Episcopalians! God’s Frozen People! I used to be one. I might go back now. “Come for the outrage, stay for the cocktails.”
It turns out what the Episcopalians need every 500 years is an obese tyrant with red-gold hair and frontal lobe damage. (Henry VIII got them going.)
But I digress. Connecticut Republicans? Yoo-hoo!
Let me direct your attention to the first thing the president said in that phone call to the governors, before he told them they would “look like a bunch of jerks” if they didn’t “dominate” the protesters in their states: “People here that you’ll be seeing a lot of. Gen. (Mark) Milley is here.
He’s head of the joint chiefs of staff, a fighter, a war hero, a lot of victories and no losses and he hates to see the way it’s being handled in the various states and I just put him in charge.”
That’s important. A face “you’ll be seeing a lot of ” is the general who “hates” the wimpy response in the states and has been put in charge.
A few hours later, heavily armored troops of murky provenance — apparently a blend of federal park police, Secret Service, personnel from several Homeland Security agencies and possibly members of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), which was formerly the fictional home of Jack Bauer in “24” — assembled with clubs and shields and rubber bullets and smoke grenades and some kind of gas.
We should pause here. Trump’s presidential campaign issued a blistering statement demanding a retraction from media outlets that called it tear gas. Because it did not say “ACME Tear Gas” on the cannisters like the ones Wile E. Coyote used. This is a common Trump technique: give them some little detail to fact check regarding the larger abomination.
It’s like Darth Vader arguing with the press about what came out of the Death Star. “You keep calling it a ‘superlaser,’ but it’s actually a (patent pending) Planet Killing Beam.”
What we should be arguing about: Why don’t we know more about those people swinging and punching and kicking and gassing and shooting (with rubber bullets) protesters and journalists? It seems to have been some kind of Paramilitary Breakfast Blend. Who put it together?
Now, Connecticut Republican politicians, who has condemned this misuse of force? Former Defense Secretary and Marine Gen. James Mattis. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mark Mullen. Republican U.S. Sens. Tim Scott of Florida and Ben Sasse of Nebraska. The government of Australia
(understandably upset to see Aussie journalists punched and struck by a shield and by rubber bullets).
And George Will. Understand: Eons ago, there was a pool of pure, gleaming conservative protoplasm. It sat up, and God put a bow tie on it. “From now on,” said God, “you will be known as George Will.”
Will last week wrote that Trump must be defeated, adding, “Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.” Now there’s a sentence! On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican from Alaska, said ... something. She said she had been “struggling” for “a long time” about whether she could vote for Trump. “When I saw Gen. Mattis’ comments yesterday, I felt like perhaps we’re getting to the point where we can be more honest with the concerns we might hold internally and have the courage of our convictions and speak up.”
Allow me to translate: “Look at my whiskers. It does seem like water is beading up on them. And my little paws are certainly wet, and so is my tail. Is it possible this ship is sinking? Because, if so …”
Connecticut Republican politicians, none of you has made a peep. I covered so many of your fine predecessors. Congressmen Stew McKinney and Chris Shays. State senators Russell Post, Lew Rome and Lawrence DeNardis. State representatives John Berman and Gerald Stevens. These are good people. They wouldn’t have countenanced this.
But I must be wrong. It can’t be that all of them were giants and all of you, every last one of you, is rubbish. The political climate has changed somehow. You seem paralyzed by your voters. There aren’t many Connecticut Republican voters, and most of them still love Trump.
So you’re afraid to do what’s right. But don’t come to me this fall or three years from now and say you’re ready to lead.
Because you could have.
And you didn’t.
You know who got it right? Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Last February, after the impeachment and non-removal, she said, the president had learned “a pretty big lesson.”
Boy, did he ever.