I don’t often quote The Atlantic, but this is well worth the read:
For decades, conservative activists and leaders have warned that “jackbooted thugs” from the federal government were going to come to take away Americans’ civil rights with no due process and no recourse. Now they’re here—but they’re deployed by a staunchly right-wing president with strong conservative support.
The story is flawed to be sure. The idea that an authoritarian like Trump is “staunchly right-wing” is just incorrect. That he has “strong conservative support” is an exaggeration considering how Trump’s supporters are hardly conservatives. Nevertheless, I encourage you to read the entire thing.
Editorializing aside, the facts of the article are far from an exaggeration. The Administration is cobbling together the very federal police force that Republicans generally and conservatives specifically have warned about for years.
If you go back far enough, you find the people on fringe websites talking about very off the wall things. Black helicopters. Snatching civilians off the street. Nameless federal officers without identification patrolling the streets. Often, the people who espoused those theories were dismissed to the fringe corners of the internet. They were scorned by active conservatives and mainstream Republicans alike.
Now, a federal police force is here. And many of the same people are cheering it along. Because Trump did it and for many, support of Trump supersedes whatever ideology they may have previously held.
The bizarre thing about all of this? Is the fact that there are real reasons why the Administration would want to deploy federal law enforcement on the streets.
Washington, D.C. is the federal district; it has jurisdiction over D.C. and its environs and ultimate responsibility to enforce the law.
There are federal buildings in Portland, for example, that would require federal protection and security.
So why is the Administration cobbling together these police forces together into something to deploy on the streets? Who knows, other than the fact that the default of this Administration is to act in an authoritarian manner.
Sadly, most conservatives have even sat out this debate or even supported it. Senator Rand Paul (usually a Trump Administration lapdog) is the only notable Republican to speak out.
The issue I want to talk about here is less the issue of the federal police force. It’s actually about the total capitulation of conservatism to Trumpism. The Republican Party has become a subsidiary of The Trump Organization. Why else would the RNC be goosing book sales for yet another Donald Trump, Jr. book? Why else would the Freedom Caucus go from being the champions of small government and spending reduction in Congress to the GOP Thought Police?
I’ll expand on this more the closer we get to the election and beyond. But for somebody who remains and an actual conservative who has remained a Republican for practical reasons, it remains frustrating as hell that all of the “truuuue conservatives” rolled over so easily in trading their supposed principles for a political chameleon who does not hold a single political position outside of whatever helps feed his ego.