“Law and Order Party” My Ass

It began with Donald Trump. This 8-year-long campaign to blatantly and shamelessly undermine and subvert America‘s rule of law. The climax of course being Trump’s 2021 refusal to participate in a peaceful transition of power.

Subsequently, he and fellow Republicans in and out of Congress have shown a general disregard and disdain for our criminal justice system and the U.S. Constitution.

In the past week alone, we’ve seen Alabama defy a Supreme Court order to add a second black district to its congressional map, and watched Texas Governor Greg Abbott defy the Department of Justice’s order to remove floating barriers in the Rio Grande that are deemed dangerous and inhumane to migrants while disrupting US Border Patrol operations in the area.

Before Trump, Republicans and Democrats would put aside policy differences on abortion, taxes, regulation etc and agreed on matters pertaining to the rule of law national security. Partisanship, they’d say, ends at the shore (and usually at the Constitution as well).

But in today’s toxic partisan landscape, the party that once prided itself on being the party of faith, of fiscal responsibility, of law and order, of national security now only gives a shit about one thing: winning. At all costs. Regardless if economic peril, inhumanity, crime and autocracy are the ultimate cost.

So there’s no more deference to and respect for the separation of powers. For co-equal branches of government. For Congress. For the courts. For judges. For subpoenas. For the rule of law. For the Constitution. For national security. And for our very democracy itself. Republicans have reconciled that violating the law, and slipping into autocracy, is ok with them as long as the criminal and the autocrat, is their guy.