Establishment Republicans are beginning to distance themselves from outgoing president Donald Trump. Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday condemned Trump for inciting the insurrectionists who trashed the Capitol on Jan. 6:
“The mob was fed lies,” McConnell said. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”
Those still in thrall to the soon-former president must have ground their teeth at words from the epitome of establishment Republicans dissing their god-king. But from Republicans who do want to get back to “normal” expect born-again deficit-hawkism now that Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress. Because their opposition to “big government” is never about taxes or size of “deficits.” Big government is when tax dollars spent by Democratic administrations flow into the wrong pockets: rich people — good; poor/nonwhite people — bad.
Back to normal abnormal for both establishment Republicans and their political base means attacking government entitlements.
What they won’t attack is the sense among Republicans and Trump’s cult that they are entitled to run the United States of America. That it is theirs. They built it, they own it —them. No matter that hundreds of years of history and building preceded them. They believe this nation was bequeathed them by Jesus as a white-evangelical-Christian sinecure. A kingdom for white males to rule in perpetuity.
All those flowery words in the Declaration and Preamble about equality and general Welfare were just fine with white America so long as lessers knew their places. But since over the last half century everyone else began demanding the U.S. live up to those lofty words, the right has been pitching progressively more violent hissy fits.
And here we are, still repairing the doors and windows in the Capitol damaged when the pro-Trump insurrection pitched the most dramatic hissy fit yet. Conservative, white America was entitled to getting the president it wanted and popular sovereignty be damned.
Talk about entitled.