Family values. How long have we been subjected to that subjective phrase, championed by Republicans who equated it with heterosexuality, fecundity and Christian piety – and who appointed themselves the custodians of those?
Well, they lost any remaining claim to that mantle by embracing Donald Trump and then Roy Moore. Neither won the support of all Republicans, but both won the backing or complicity of enough of them to confirm just how hollow and hypocritical the party’s attachment to conservative morality always was.
Fiscal responsibility. How loudly have Republicans harangued us about that? It’s a worthy harangue – or at least it would be if there were an iota of integrity and consistency behind it.
But Republicans are enacting a sweeping overhaul of the tax code that will add nearly $1.5 trillion to federal deficits over the next decade. In all the news coverage of their need to finesse the math so that they don’t exceed that amount, the fact that they’re plunging the country so much deeper into the red in the first place almost gets lost.
What pretty lies Republicans tell, most of all about themselves. And what a gorgeous opportunity they have given Democrats to steal that bogus rhetoric right out from under them.