Under Donald Trump’s leadership, Republicans have reached the pinnacle of fecklessness: they are the party of non-responsibility. The buck always stops with someone else—preferably Barack Obama. But the media, law enforcement ... really anything else will do. It just never stops with the person pointing the finger, writes TPM’s Cameron Joseph.
Adam Putnam, Florida’s agriculture commissioner and a top candidate for his party’s gubernatorial nomination in the key swing state, responded to questions about his family company’s failure to pay four workers minimum wage by blaming it on the previous president.
“After three days of Obama regulators crawling around our lower intestine, they came up with a $250 fine, which was later dismissed,” he told local reporters — even though that Department of Labor investigation into his family’s company, which forced them to pay $1,672 in back wages, began a year before Obama was even in office. [...]
Former coal baron Don Blankenship is running for the right to face Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) this fall even though he’s still on parole after a year in prison for his role in failing to prevent a mine accident that killed 29 workers. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (R) only avoided jail time for criminal contempt because Trump pardoned him — and now he’s running for the Senate in Arizona. Former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY) is seeking a comeback in his old congressional district after a stint behind bars for tax fraud, challenging Rep. Dan Donovan (R-NY) by complaining/bragging “the entire Obama Justice Department [was] weaponized against me.” All three have largely blamed Obama for their past troubles rather than take responsibility for their actions, even when the courts have found them all guilty.
Naturally, Trump—the master of aggrieved paranoia—is setting the pace for the rest of the Republican party.
The leftist media isn’t fair to him, law enforcement is corrupt at the highest levels (including his own appointees), and Democrats are destroying his agenda even though Republicans control all of Washington. But in spite of his self-generated nihilistic pity party, his 37 percent is solid as a rock—doesn’t matter what he does or says. And that bedrock loyalty includes supposed “values voters,” where evangelical support for Trump is raging.
Trump’s fellow Republicans have taken the lesson to heart: It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you find someone to blame whom your supporters despise. And Trump’s new brand of ‘enemies list’ puts Richard Nixon’s to shame.