Love of country

“Democrats hate our President more than they love our country” tweeted GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel recently, managing to capture the insanely ironic delusions of President Trump and his supporters in just 10 words.

It’s worth noting that McDaniel used to be known as Ronna Romney McDaniel before she complied with President Trump’s request that she remove her maiden name to avoid reminding him of her uncle who famously called Trump a phony and a fraud. Now that Gov. Romney has moved to Utah to run for a U.S. Senate seat, he’s trying to position himself to the right of Trump on immigration, denying the Dreamers a future in the only home most of them have ever known, stating, “I draw the line and say, those who’ve come illegally should not be given a special path to citizenship.” But Dreamers love their adopted country despite the GOP’s rejection.

The McDaniel tweet is rich with irony, considering how Republicans made no secret of opposing the policies of our nation’s last president simply because he was a Democrat. Who can forget then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s bold proclamation that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” This goal hardly puts country before party.

McDaniel’s tweet is designed to divide us. It begs the question of whether it is patriotic to continue to blindly support a president even when his behavior is contrary to a group’s righteously proclaimed values just because he’s not a Democrat. Ask white evangelicals who ignore Trump’s numerous and seedy extramarital affairs with porn actresses and starlets. Ask budget hawks who have looked the other way as our deficit has grown and grown so the rich can have more money. Ask conservatives who see nothing wrong with unqualified Cabinet secretaries—think Betsy DeVos at Education or Ben Carson at HUD. What about all those Cabinet secretaries’ reckless, greedy use of taxpayer money for luxury travel and high-end office furniture, or the practice of allowing their family members to infiltrate government offices?

And we haven’t even touched the ethical transgressions of people appointed by the president—for instance, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and his sweet Capital Hill housing supplied by an energy lobbyist at such an obscenely low price it basically qualifies as something akin to a bribe, not to mention the $2,460 in taxpayer dollars used to repair the condo door when Pruitt’s security detail had to break in when his office thought he must be unconscious because he wasn’t responding during business hours. Turns out he was taking a nap.

Now the President has nominated his personal physician—who has never managed anything bigger than the president’s ego—to lead one of our most important and complex government agencies, the Veterans Administration. Dr. Ronny Jackson will take over from Obama appointee Dr. David Shulkin, who had his own ethical lapses last summer while traveling with his wife on government business in England. Secretary Shulkin wrote a blistering editorial in the New York Times after his firing-by-tweet, the President’s favorite way of getting rid of his senior staff, warning the nation that Trump shoved him to the side to make room for someone who will follow the Koch brothers’ plans to privatize the V.A. After all, there is still more money to be made during the Trump years.

Who are these people? Who are we that we allow this behavior? Why don’t Republicans revolt and demand that their party leaders stop the blaming and shaming and denigration of those who disagree with the President’s actions?

Instead of emulating Trump’s bullying behavior, McDaniel should consider that Democrats and many Americans of other political persuasions oppose the President precisely because we do love our country.