Facilitating A Sham

We must stop fronting for these frauds.

In February, Politico's Tim Alberta interviewed South Carolina senator Mark Sanford and gushed

then he does the strangest thing of all: He lays waste to the president of his own party.

Most Republicans in Washington are biting their tongues when it comes to Donald Trump, fearful that any candid criticisms of the new president could invite a backlash from their constituents or, potentially worse, provoke retribution from the commander in chief himself.

Mark Sanford is not like most Republicans in Washington.

His policy résumé is beyond reproach to those on the right: He was D.C.’s dashing fiscal hawk during his first stint in the House...

In May, the Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe remarked that Senator Jeff

Flake (R-Ariz.) isn’t afraid to buck President Trump — or to defy the Republican orthodoxy in Washington that the agenda is proceeding apace. He did it last year, refusing to support Trump for president, and he’s doing it again now by publicly doubting that the GOP can revamp the nation’s health-care system.

Last month, New York Magazine's Eric Levitz referred to

the tune that GOP leaders have been singing to their party’s few sincere deficit hawks. And those lonely fiscal scolds know they’re being lied to.

“The savings, the score, it just isn’t valid because you know that they’re not going to follow through,” Arizona senator Jeff Flake said recently. “You can’t assume that we’ll grow a backbone later. If we can’t do it now, then it’s tough to do it later.”

Flake isn’t the only Senate Republican who isn’t crazy about drastically expanding the debt that his party spent the past eight years decrying. 

Levitz then cited Flake's Arizona colleague, John McCain, as well as senators Bob Corker (Tennessee), Todd Young (Indiana), and James Lankford (Oklahoma) as among the GOP's "deficit hawks."  For real.  (Video below is from October, 2017.)





These five Republican senators- as well as Representative Sanford- have something in common. They all supported the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017.

John McCain, at home recuperating from surgery for a brain tumor, did not vote but already had made it known that he would support the legislation. The others actually voted in favor of  a bill expected to increase the debt by $1,440,000,000,000.

Corker and Flake, who already have announced their retirement, are probably merely cashing in, anxious to sell themselves to the highest-bidding conservative think tanks, which in turn may enjoy the honor of billing themselves "fiscal hawks" while being fiscally reckless.

Levitz at least acknowledged that only by voting against the tax scheme would GOP senators be putting "fiscal responsibility above upward redistribution."

Lankford, Young, Sanford, and other Republicans may be afraid of a primary challenge or of the tweets- or mere disapproval- of Donald J. Trump. Or they may be living the dream of Paul Davis Ryan, eager to run the deficit up so he may complain later that Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other pillars of the social safety net must be sacrificed in the name of "fiscal responsibility."

Their motives are not fully known and may be varied. But we do know that they are not fiscally responsible, are not "fiscal conservatives" or "deficit hawks," and are carrying water for President Trump. They are getting are a major break from a media unwilling to acknowledge that GOP talk about debt and deficits was, is, and always shall be all talk and no action.


To Christians: Merry Christmas
     
                   To Jews: Belated Happy Chanukah
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                                     To Donald Trump:  Happy Holidays!

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