If you know any Republicans, you might want to give them a hug.
This can’t be easy for them. Most of them did not support Donald Trump for their party’s nomination – he never did poll much above 40 percent among Republican primary voters. But almost all of them ended up voting for him last November (with a few notable exceptions like Sen. Susan Collins).
Hillary Clinton had no appeal for conservatives, and all the polls said she was going to win anyway, so she was easy to vote against, regardless of the opponent.
Now, just a few months into his administration, they have to be feeling “mildly nauseous,” like former FBI Director James Comey when he realized that the man he helped put in control of the government has no self-control. Oops.
There is not enough space here to recount the events of the last week: Let’s just say that one of the most dangerous places to be in the world these days is defending the president, and that can’t be pleasant for those Republicans who never really liked him to begin with.
Rod Dreher, editor of The American Conservative, captured the feeling in a blog post Sunday: “Last night a friend, a staunch populist conservative, texted to say, ‘We are having our Caligula moment.’ ”
Caligula, you may recall, was the mad Roman emperor who killed on a whim, married his sisters, promoted a horse to the Senate and insisted on being worshipped as a god. Dreher appears to be referring to the moment when the Praetorian Guard, whose job it was to protect the emperor, decided that they would protect the empire instead and stabbed him to death.
Dreher’s not calling for a coup, I don’t think. He is doing what all responsible Republicans should be doing – drawing a line in their minds over which Trump cannot cross, and then figuring out what the consequence for crossing it would be – because you know he’s going do it eventually.
It would be good for them to figure out how much is too much, because Trump will get away with everything Republicans want to let him get away with.
He fired the head of the FBI while the FBI is investigating clandestine support of his campaign by organs of Russian intelligence.
You OK with that, Republicans?
What’s that, you say? Comey was not fired because of the Russian investigation? Maybe you should listen to the man’s own explanation for the abrupt dismissal: “When I decided to do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election they should have won.’ ”
Then The Washington Post tells us that the day after firing Comey, Trump boasted to the Russian foreign minister and U.S ambassador about the “great intel” he’s been getting and blurted out highly sensitive classified information.
That sent National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster out of the White House to issue a meticulously worded non-categorial denial, saying that Trump had not compromised any “sources or methods” and had only discussed military conflicts that were already known to the public.
By that standard, Franklin D. Roosevelt could have told Hitler about the date of the D-Day landing and it would have been fine because everybody already knew about World War II.
It was the most incomplete evasion since candidate Bill Clinton was asked if he’d ever smoked pot (“I have not broken the laws of the state of Arkansas”).
Still, Republicans were clinging to that slim reed until Tuesday morning, when Trump set us all straight with a tweet.
In other words, “Yes, I did it. Do you have a problem with that?”
Well, Republicans, do you?
I imagine that Republicans feel defensive when the attacks on Trump pile on, especially when they come from people who oppose the Republican agenda on health care, taxes, immigration and reproductive rights.
But even if he wasn’t their first choice, Donald Trump was the Republicans’ ultimate choice to serve in the most important job in the world.
He could not have gotten this far without the backing of rank and file. When he goes too far, Republicans will have to embrace their “Caligula moment.”
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Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at:
Twitter: @gregkesich
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