Republicans Have No Idea What Time It Is
Following the egregious raid by the FBI on former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate earlier this week, congressional Republicans are responding to such Third World, political persecution in the same way they always do: by issuing meaningless statements.
Since the news of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s targeting of Trump broke Monday evening, GOP officials in Congress have released a range of public statements condemning the raid, while offering no real legislative solutions on how to address the blatant, left-wing abuse of power that has plagued America’s Justice Department (DOJ) for years. Take, for example, Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who after waiting half a day to respond to the story, took to Twitter to issue the weakest remark imaginable.
“Raiding a former president’s home is unprecedented,” he wrote. “The Justice Department needs to quickly and transparently tell the American people who approved this raid and why it occurred.”
Despite his best attempts, Barrasso’s utterly useless tweet couldn’t match the cowardice displayed by fellow GOP Sen. Tim Scott, who during an interview on “CBS Mornings” gave credence to the FBI’s overtly political actions by encouraging Americans to let the situation “play out” before drawing any conclusions.
“There’s been lots of questions before this raid about whether or not the FBI is doing their job apolitical and we don’t know the answer to that question yet,” the South Carolina Republican said. “[The raid] is going to raise more questions, in my opinion. We need to let this play out and see exactly what happens.”
While Scott and Barrasso’s remarks are awful in their own right, the amount of time it took for Senate Republican “leadership” to speak out on the raid takes the cake. When first given a chance to comment on the matter during a Tuesday press conference in his home state of Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to condemn the Garland Justice Department for its actions, instead stating that he was only there to “talk about the flood[s]” ravaging the Bluegrass State.
After facing immense backlash from Republican voters and conservative pundits for his silence, McConnell later issued a pathetic statement on Tuesday evening — nearly a full day after the story broke — saying, “The country deserves a thorough and immediate explanation of what led to the events of Monday,” and that “Attorney General Garland and the Department of Justice should already have provided answers to the American people and must do so immediately.”
The GOP Still Doesn’t Get It
As expected, the response from congressional Republicans to the Biden DOJ’s targeting of a former president and a potential 2024 presidential candidate has been nothing short of abysmal. Even the pledge by GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to hold oversight hearings on the “weaponized politicization” of the DOJ was weak and will prove futile in the long run, as demonstrated during a recent Senate hearing in which FBI Director Christopher Wray avoided addressing Republican questions about his agency’s left-wing bias. Wray also reportedly left the hearing early “to go on vacation in a taxpayer-funded private jet.”
Taken collectively, the lackluster reaction from Republicans demonstrates once again that the party still doesn’t grasp the moment we’re living in. This isn’t 1990s politics anymore. The days of “bipartisanship” and “reaching across the aisle” are long behind us.
Democrats have repeatedly shown they have no interest in letting bygones be bygones. One needs to look no further than the left’s infiltration of major American institutions and amassing of power within government agencies, which they’ve actively used to punish their political opponents at every available opportunity. Whether it’s the FBI’s orchestration of the phony Trump-Russia collusion investigation or the IRS’s harassing of conservative Tea Party groups during the Obama administration, the message from leftists is clear: Take your Constitution and shove it.
For Republicans like Scott to suggest that agencies such as the FBI still possess any semblance of objectivity after everything they’ve put the country through the past several years is not only laughable; it’s indicative of just how out of touch Republicans are with the reality the country finds itself in today. Whether the GOP likes to admit it, America is engaged in a cold civil war, and all available evidence shows the left has no intention of backing down.
At the end of the day, Republican statements of condemnation and outrage over Democrats’ abuse of government powers are just empty words. Until Republicans learn to punch back forcibly against Democrats and punish corrupt DOJ officials for their criminal actions, leftists throughout America’s government will not hesitate to use every tool in their arsenal to go after anyone who stands in the way of their neo-Marxist utopia.
Unfortunately for those who love America, the GOP has largely shown it is both incapable and unwilling to do so, thus leaving an already-fragile country on the brink.
Shawn Fleetwood is an intern at The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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