Getting out of line: A growing number of Republicans won’t sing from the Trump hymnal anymore

It was all going according to plan a year ago. The Republican party would build on its successes, ignore its failures and win again, with a triumphant second term for Donald Trump as president, a second term that would, pretty much by its very existence, signal the triumph of conservative values, and the advance of those values across the country. 

 Trump would either win the election outright or, failing a victory at the polls where it counts, he’d throw the election results into chaos with a staggering wave of lawsuits and challenges presided over by judges Trump appointed. And if everything went south in the lower courts, why, Trump would just elevate the matter to the House of the Supremes, where three of his own hand-picked Justices would end the unpredictability and — ultimately, in spite of everything — make him the winner of the 2020 election. 

 No one back then war-gamed for the impossible. No one expected the party’s standard-bearer to disintegrate like a timed-release aspirin. No one, or very few, anticipated the worst public-health emergency in a century exploding on these shores like a million wildfires. And while racism is as predictable as the sunrise, no one could have envisioned the 8-minute, 46-second execution of George Perry Floyd, or the national paroxysm of protests in his name and honor and memory. 

The tragically peculiar blend of calamities we’re trying to survive in 2020 has been unpredictable, to say the least. President Trump, the avatar of unpredictability, faces more of it from the same people most predisposed to support him. This “base” of supporters includes (among others) those amber waves upon waves of GOP voters, judges and politicians who believe in American government, and who place faith in that government above and ahead of the individuals elected to lead it. ... 

Read the full piece at Daily Kos