On Russia and Supreme Court, Republican Partisanship Is a Threat To the American Republic

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. "Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

"It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another." - George Washington's Farewell Address, 1796 (Emphasis mine)

Partisanship is not new. It had begun to rear its ugly head in the midst of Washington's own administration, with frequent battles between the Federalist faction of Hamilton and the Democratic-Republican faction of Jefferson. Nor are the modern Republicans the first politicians to act in bad faith to gain an advantage. The use of gag rules and filibusters to promote slavery and legal discrimination from our founding through even the last half-century are a stain on the very soul of our nation, and a sad reminder that some of our revered Founding Fathers do not merit the blind canonization we so often grant.

But the James Comey and Neil Gorsuch hearings before Congress this week lay bare the existential crisis we face as a nation of partisans, and serves as evidence that the modern Republican party exists to promote its own interests and not the interests of the United States of America.

First was Devin Nunes's shambolic attempt at a Russia hearing. If you listened only to Republican questions of James Comey, you would believe he was brought to Capitol Hill to testify on an ongoing investigation into illegal leaks. These partisans supported the assertion of "the chief of [their] prevailing faction" that the leaks are real but the news is fake and that somehow, some way, Barack Obama is behind all of it.

Newsflash. James Comey was brought to Capitol Hill to testify that the FBI is investigating ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. Let me rephrase that. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is actively exploring the question of whether our sitting president's campaign coordinated with a foreign government who hacked his opponent and manipulated the media and the American people in an active disinformation campaign. And there is "no information to support [Trump's] tweets" about Obama, a quote I hope never appears in a Congressional hearing again.

Devin Nunes had already compromised his side of this "investigation" by saying weeks ago that he had inside information there was no evidence (in his words, "not even pizza-delivery-guy contact") between the Trump campaign and Russia. I'm certainly not one to say James Comey knows how to do his job, but I have a hard time believing he'd spend nine months on an investigation without some kind of lead. Perhaps the reason Nunes doesn't believe that there was any contact is because, even after the Comey hearing, he claimed he NEVER HEARD OF ROGER STONE AND CARTER PAGE, two Trump associates at the center of most allegations of Russia impropriety. Perhaps if he had used the hearing to learn more about the investigation than to endorse Donald Trump conspiracy theories, he'd be capable of doing his job. (As Conor Friedersdorf pointed out for The Atlantic, Nunes has commented on newspaper articles naming Page and Stone in the past, and is more likely to be lying than incompetent, at least when it comes to remembering these two names.) You can't buy that kind of disingenuous ignorance. But you can craft it with a long career in the modern Republican party.

It was around this moment that someone in the White House press office said, "Man, I can't imagine anyone saying something more intellectually dishonest than that," Sean Spicer asked a colleague to hold his beer, and proceeded to claim that DONALD TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN MANAGER WHO CONTINUED TO ADVISE THE TRANSITION TEAM AND WHOSE BUSINESS PARTNER IN EASTERN EUROPE CONTINUES VISITING THE WHITE HOUSE TO THIS DAY HAD A "limited role" IN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN. The idea of managing a national campaign being a limited role is nonsense, even if he was forced to resign due to allegations of corrupt cash payments from a pro-Russian party in Ukraine after only five months. [A further breaking story from the AP shows that Manafort received at least $10 million from a Russian oligarch to advance Russian interests abroad, which might explain how he was able to work for Donald Trump for free.]

And how does Sean Spicer, after months of harassment and degradation, continue to spew garbage like a 16-year-old who just chugged his first bottle of Boone's Farm?

Simple. He rose in the party apparatus. He was Reince Priebus's spokesperson at the RNC before taking the job with Trump's communications office. He's not a citizen leader. He's a sports fan. He blocked out the scoreboard (37% approval, for those keeping track) and he stopped caring what his players do a long time ago. Just win, baby.

This attitude did not come out of nowhere with the Trump-Russia allegations. It's been finely crafted for decades, and to be perfectly frank, it's probably part of why Republicans have done so well over that time. They make disingenuous arguments that play well to the populace without feeling the need to think them through to their logical or truthful conclusions (a habit that may be coming back to bite them in the current healthcare debate). And nowhere was this tendency on display more than in their refusal to grant Merrick Garland so much as a hearing when Barack Obama nominated him to the Supreme Court.

The merits of the debate on Garland v. Gorsuch are, in some sense, irrelevant. One is getting a hearing and likely an appointment to the Supreme Court, and the other is a footnote in history. But the symbolism is what will last, and what may plague Senate discourse for decades to come. The party in power in the Senate chose to ignore a presidential appointment in the hopes that they could get a better deal by waiting things out. They dressed it up in different language about letting the people decide (though by people, they meant not the American populace at-large, but members of the electoral college, which is a distinction they smartly omitted at the time).

If the Democrats consider Gorsuch as a mainstream conservative (outside of his support for an employer's right to freeze their employees) and vote to confirm him, they reward blind partisanship to the detriment of their own party. If the Democrats filibuster Gorsuch on principle, they perpetuate blind partisanship to the detriment of their own country. I don't envy their decision, but we already know which one the Republicans have made.

Donald Trump gained traction because he convinced people in small towns in the Rust Belt that our political system is broken. His every action in office has proven his point, and Republicans in office eager to ask "How high?" every time he tweets for them to jump are driving it home on a daily basis. As Washington noted in his farewell address, when the thralls of partisanship take hold, "sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

All Americans, regardless of party, should want an answer on Russia allegations. All Americans, regardless of party, should want the Senate to discharge their responsibilities regardless of partisan affiliation. George Washington feared the Constitution would not survive twenty years, in part for the reasons outlined in his farewell address, so we deserve a pat on the back for exceeding his pessimistic expectations. But we owe it to ourselves to correct the problem before it's too late.

#DonaldTrump #DevinNunes #Russia #NeilGorsuch #SupremeCourt #partisanship #GeorgeWashington