Where are the sane Republicans?
When will GOP leaders realize that being against Trumpian chaos is not unpatriotic?
When will they understand that taking a stand against Trump - and removing him from office - would not be anti-Republican. After all, it's not like Vice President Mike Pence is Hillary Clinton.
When will Republicans - in leadership or out - come to grips with the realization that not respecting Donald J. Trump is not disrespecting the presidency?
If anything, by continuing to hold their noses while this chump of a man weakens our country and makes a laughingstock of our presidency, Republicans are simply helping to lead us to greater shame and digging America deeper into discord and decline.
Republicansalready have a conservative Supreme Court judge, and certainly Pence could well appoint more should vacancies occur.
Republicansalready have tax cuts for the rich. The GOP already has driven plenty of nails into the coffin of the Affordable Care Act.
But along the way there has been political carnage for the GOP and the rest of the country. Already, it seems clear that the only way the GOP might unbloody many of the Republican incumbents running for office in the mid-terms is to get Trump as far away from the Oval Office as possible. Because if GOP leadership is still waiting for the president to be presidential, they're simply delusional.
Meanwhile, the Russia connections to both Trump's financial empire and his 2016 campaign continue to be exposed day after day. And don't forget the growing stage of porn stars, former Playboy bunnies, and who knows what else that clings to his coattails.
The most amazing sight in this sad Trump slapstick is Mike Pence: How in the world does he manage to keep that worshipful look on his face day after day as he gazes raptly at the back of Trump's babbling head? Pence either has the cunning concentration of a hungry eagle or he's had plastic surgery to set his face into that constant state of adulation.
Of course, obsequious flattery is what Trump demands. Only a handful of Republicans in leadership have found themselves short on the ability to continuously offer up that sort of servile, ingratiating, sycophantic, fawning, groveling, slavish devotion.
And not even those did muster the courage to question and talk back - Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster - did so on a consistent basis. We see what happened to them: They are either out or on their way out of government. So it's understandable why Republicans, up until now, would be leery.
But the time has come. What is everybody waiting for? War? An indictment? Another Watergate with the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller?
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said two weeks ago of Trump's seeming threats to Mueller: "As I said before, if he tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency."
Well? Trump's not so subtle tweet response a few days later was to ramp it up with Mueller by name, citing claims by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a Trump sycophant: "Special Council [sic] is told to find crimes, whether a crime exists or not. I was opposed to the selection of Mueller to be Special Council [sic]. I am still opposed to it. I think President Trump was right when he said there never should have been a Special Council appointed because "
Republicans, where are you?
This is the president who talks about nuclear war like it's a golf match, who numbly tanks the markets with surprise trade wars.
This is the president who's had a White House full of people - more than 130 - who a year in still hadn't passed checks for permanent security clearances but they were and are handling critical secrets. Some were even accused wife beaters and serial gamblers.
This is the president who fired U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates after she warned of then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's vulnerability to Russian blackmail. This is the president who kept Flynn on until the media got wind of the problem. This president fired FBI Director James Comey because he wouldn't drop an investigation of Flynn and Russia interference in our election, pressured U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe 26 hours before his scheduled retirement - ostensibly because he made unauthorized releases of information to the media and "lacked candor" in talking about it. (That "lacked candor" part about McCabe is especially rich, given the number of times Trump and Sessions have been caught in lies and misrepresentations.)
This is the president who last June ordered White House Chief Counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller, backing down only after McGahn threatened to resign rather than carry out the directive. This is the president who then asked McGahn to lie and say he never made that order, or forgot he made it. Which is worse?
At the heart of it, this is the president who can't find a bad word to say about American's long-time enemy, Vladimir Putin, and who ignored a bipartisan law by refusing to sanction Russia for anything until a brazen Russian poisoning of two former spies in Britain with nerve gas threatened dozens of Brits. Even then it was our allies - not Republicans - who left Trump no face-saving alternative but to join in punishing the Kremlin. When did Republicans go soft on foreign policy - especially when it involves Russia?
This is the president who, at every turn, flip-flops on his positions and breaks promises - even to Republicans. This is the president who lies over and over to the American public - even when he's been exposed for those lies time and time again.
And just think: This list of Trump horrors only includes what should reasonably frighten conservative Republicans. We won't even try to bullet-point the things that make Democrats crazy, like inciting race and ethnic hate, gutting environmental regulations and sabotaging health care gains.
Republicans, where are you? Get your heads out of the sand and begin the work to oust Donald Trump from the Oval Office before we have no country left.