Today's Must-Read: It's Not Just Trump

It's the entire Republican party, and it's an insanity we've seen developing since Reagan. This article in The Guardian lays it out. This is via Digby, so I'll start with her introduction:

I don't think we can underestimate how important it is that Trump came along when the GOP was at peak crazy. He probably couldn't have made it if that weren't true. They are, in a slightly different way, just as looney and dangerous as he is, and their lunacy enables his.

This article in the Guardian get[s] to that issue:

Sure, Republican senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham vow to hold Trump to account. But the rest of them are profiles in moral weakness, prepared to turn two blind eyes to the actions of the president simply because he wears the right party colours. So Devin Nunes, chair of the House intelligence committee, which should be investigating all this, says “there’s nothing there”. His colleague Jason Chaffetz, who chairs the House oversight committee, declined to look into the Flynn affair because “it’s taking care of itself”. Oversight, it seems, is precisely the right word. But please don’t get the impression that Chaffetz is lethargic in his supervisory duties. On the contrary, there’s one scandal he’s very keen to investigate even now: Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

We've seen it happening -- more and more it's been party before country, rule rather than govern, and the only goal is to obtain and maintain power. I think it's a combination of the natural tendency to oligarchy of the "party of business" and the authoritarian mind-set of the "Christian" right; add in a kind of situational morality -- that is, moral standards apply to everyone except the chosen -- and you have the Republican party, 2017.

So now we've ensconced the worst that America has to offer in the White House. I hope we survive it.