If Republicans love their country, when will they show it? Paul Krugman on the new climate of treason. We are living in the Coen Brothers’ darkest comedy: 2008’s “Burn After Reading” strikingly resembles the bumbling plot of Trump’s Russia scandal, but also captures how amorality leads to treason. The Donald Trump Jr. email scandal goes well beyond Russia. The most dangerous game: How long can Republicans risk everything to pretend Russia is no big deal? The GOP’s moral rot is the problem, not Donald Trump Jr. Reverence for Putin on the Right buys Trump cover. House Intel Dem warns Trump could issue private “prospective, blanket pardon” on Russia.
The John Birch Society is back: Bircher ideas, once on the fringe, are increasingly commonplace in today’s GOP and espoused by friends in high places — and the group is ready to make the most of it. Joe Scarborough on how Trump is killing the Republican Party. Trump is ushering in a dark new conservatism: If Republicans do not wish to repeat the mistakes of the German conservatives of the 1930s, they had better find their courage — and their conservatism — fast. End times for the American republic? Julian Zelizer, author of The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society and Morton Keller, author of Obama’s Time: A History, discuss today’s political climate and whether it has parallels with other periods.
From The Washington Monthly, D.R. Tucker on Trump’s indelible stain on American history; and this too shall pass: Could anti-Trump animus pave the way for the election of a Democratic president who can enact lasting progressive reforms?
