Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: David Brooks falls victim to the soft bigotry of low expectations: the Republicans have, overwhelmingly, already chosen the baboon cage. And they are locked in there with Trump:
David Brooks: The Republican Fausts: "Many Republican members of Congress have made a Faustian bargain with Donald Trump...
...They hope he’ll sign their legislation and they certainly don’t want to be seen siding with the inflamed progressives or the hyperventilating media.... If the last 10 days have made anything clear, it’s this: The Republican Fausts are in an untenable position. The deal they’ve struck... really will cost them their soul....
Outspoken critics of Paul Ryan are being given White House jobs, and at the same time, if Reince Priebus has a pulse it is not externally evident.... Rven if Trump’s ideology were not noxious, his incompetence is a threat.... The Trump administration is less a government than a small clique of bloggers and tweeters who are incommunicado with the people who actually help them get things done.... Bigotry infuses the whole operation, and anybody who aligns too closely will end up sharing in the stench.... The racial club is always there.... [It's] identity is... tainted by cruelty....
None of these traits will improve with time. As former Bush administration official Eliot Cohen wrote in The Atlantic, “Precisely because the problem is one of temperament and character, it will not get better. It will get worse.... It will not be surprising in the slightest if his term ends not in four or in eight years, but sooner, with impeachment or removal under the 25th Amendment.”... This is not a normal administration. It is a problem that demands a response.... Already one sees John McCain and Lindsey Graham forming a bit of a Republican opposition. The other honorable senators will have to choose: Collins, Alexander, Portman, Corker, Cotton, Sasse and so on and so on.... Sooner or later all will have to choose what side they are on, and live forever after with the choice.
