You have to give them credit. There is rapid response and then there is rapid response. I was still reading the text of Alexander Vindman's extraordinary opening statement, which had become public about 10 minutes earlier, and already, over on Fox, Laura Ingraham was hosting John Yoo and Alan Dershowitz. Ingraham already had accused Vindman of dual loyalty and Yoo already had intimated that he might be "treasonous." (This was quite a panel. It spanned the gamut of conservative thought. One guy approves of torture and the other guy holds the moderate opinion that torture is OK as long as you have a warrant for it.)

Of course, this continued throughout Tuesday morning. Sean Duffy, the meathead ex-congresscritter from Wisconsin and newly minted CNN commentator, said Vindman seemed "incredibly concerned with Ukrainian defense policy. I don't know if he's concerned about American policy." And, over in the comfy precincts of Fox's Three Dolts On A Divan, Brian Kilmeade, who makes Sean Duffy sound like Talleyrand, mused that Vindman was "sympatico" with Ukraine. Shut up, pendejo.

All of which excited the newly activated consciences of many of our Never Trump politicians and colleagues. Joe Scarborough was positively agog at the slander aimed at a decorated veteran. From the electric Twitter machine:

Will Republicans on Capitol Hill trash an Iraqi War hero who was awarded the Purple Heart, when he shared concerns about America’s national security? Is the Trump Personality Cult more powerful to them now than a war hero’s patriotism?



Senator John Thune was shocked to find conservatives behaving like conservatives. From Politico:



“That guy’s a Purple Heart. I think it would be a mistake to attack his credibility,” said South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Senate Republican, in an interview. “You can obviously take issue with the substance and there are different interpretations about all that stuff. But I wouldn’t go after him personally. He’s a patriot.”

Nice loophole there, Braveheart.



Profiles in Courage: John Thune. Caroline Brehman Getty Images

Liz Cheney, of all creatures, pronounced herself appalled.

We need to show that we are better than that as a nation.

(Narrator: Please hold all projectile vomiting until our program is concluded. Thank you.)

Granted, it's a good thing when people at least pretend to be human in a good cause. But it remains to be seen whether Never Trump is a dead-end philosophy. For it to be of any value at all when El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago leaves office, it has to evolve into Never Trump Again. And that means coming to a reckoning with the politicians and policies you supported that made the eventual rise of a Trump-like figure not merely possible, but inevitable.

Where, for example, were the Never Trump concerns about slandering war heroes in 2002, when wounded veteran Max Cleland was slandered as a terrorist sympathizer by Republicans in support of Saxby Chambliss—a campaign, it should be noted, advised by current Never Trump hero Rick Wilson? (It was so bad that Republican senator Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam veteran himself, threatened to come to Georgia and campaign for Cleland if the Chambliss campaign didn't knock it off.) Where were they when the Swift Boats sailed in 2004? Where were they in New York at the 2004 Republican National Convention? Did they upbraid the people with the Purple Heart Band-Aids? Did they say squat about slandering that decorated war hero in the years between John Kerry's defeat and Donald Trump's victory? If they did, I didn't hear it.

This all is too much even for Liz Cheney. SAUL LOEB Getty Images

(Here's Wilson from the electric Twitter machine, tap-dancing his way around the slander he spread in 2002.)

None of this is unprecedented, if you've been paying attention to American politics since 1980. It's just intensified now, and it's being deployed in defense of a presidency so garishly incompetent and criminal that Republicans are concerned that it might damage the brand—and/or the country—for decades. Glad to have them aboard. All hands on deck and all that. Quick's the word and sharp's the action. But the reckoning has to come, and it has to come from the party and the politics that produced this calamity. And that will demand a reckoning with all the Atwaterian vandalism that has come before it. An acceptance of responsibility. Otherwise, everything has been a waste.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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