Good article. It is absolutely true that the GOP has been off living in its own head for a long time. I attribute this not only to the longstanding tendency of all politicians to forget who elected them once they get into office, but to the fact that bad GOP leadership in Congress during the Obama years gave them the feeling that there was no point in even trying to oppose the uni-party policy consensus.
Obama ignored the legislative bodies in any case and pretty much took to ruling by fiat - things such as his immigration orders, for example, or even his attempts to interfere in local things like policing and criminal justice - and nobody stood up on their hind legs and fought back or even did more than make a polite murmur of objection. This is the thing that has clearly made the electorate, both Dem and GOP, think that the US form of government is over, the rule of law doesn’t apply anymore, and we might as well dissolve the legislature and go to one-man ruie, since that was what Obama tried and pretty much got away with. Now they just want the dictator to be on their side.
Of course, dictators never are on the side of anybody but themselves, as everybody throughout history has discovered a little too late. A recent example is the voters who elected the haranguing, irrational populist Hugo Chavez in VZ, and are now living in hunger and want under his successor while the late Hugo’s daughter flaunts her status as one of the four richest women in the world with the billions of dollars that Chavez funneled to her out of VZ.
I thought it couldn’t happen here, but it just might, as the consequence of GOP toleration of Obama’s eight years of unpunished, unrestrained lawlessness and contempt for democratic institutions.
Excellent analysis