Republicans: getting credit for hypocrisy

The recently reported virtue of Senate Republicans is in fact a display of vice.

For good, empirical reason one seldom reads the words "virtue" and "Senate Republicans" in the same sentence, yet this incompatibility has taken hold of late, or has at least been implied. As the NY Times relates, "Senate Republicans who almost never link arms in unison against a president from their party formed a cordon around Mr. Sessions, making it clear that they neither concurred with nor would tolerate Mr. Trump’s repeated threats to the attorney general’s tenure."

Touching, is it not? The presumed plot is that of a political thriller: An unhinged president accordingly eager to sign whatever immoral legislative rot emerges from congressional Republicans is nevertheless being faced down by the beneficiaries. To defend Jeff Sessions they stand ready — courageously — to forego the sorely needed blessings of the madman in the Oval Office. For Senate Republicans there are limits to their president's corruption, and the firing of Mr. Sessions would reach that intolerable barrier — loyalty to a partisan president be damned.

In this, we're informed, there is virtue. The ultimate object of Trump's firing of Sessions would be the firing of Special Counsel Bob Mueller, which, more straightforwardly, would mean presidential obstruction of justice. Here, Senate Republicans join the resistance; such a blatant criminal act they simply will not tolerate. Hence, from assorted commentators of varying ideological sentiments, we see the rhetorical deployment of Republicans' courage and virtue.

Insert throat-clearing here.

Mr. Trump has already committed — blatantly — the criminal act of obstruction of justice. He sacked James Comey. The FBI director was hot on Trump's tail — just as Mueller is now — and the president knew it. So he fired him. By Trump's own admission he canned the FBI director because of the "Russia thing"; not because of Comey's incompetence or his agency's loss of confidence in him, as the White House initially pretended. The investigated fired the investigator only because the latter was pursuing justice; Trump obstructed that pursuit, and that, plainly, was a criminal act.

And yet outraged Republicans were nowhere to be found. At worst, in their public eyes, Trump's criminal act was unseemly. Had President Hillary Clinton fired Comey, that instantly — and rightly — would have sparked an impeachment process. Not so for Trump. Far from it.

Now, though, merely the potential of another Trumpian obstruction of justice has Republicans, especially Senate Republicans, linked arm in arm in virtuous opposition (or so we're told). But their reported virtue lies largely in the fact that Sessions was a member of the good old boys Senate Club. Comey was not. Thus Trump's blatant and actual act of obstruction of justice was seedily dismissed by the virtuous.

Somehow, Republicans always find a way to take hypocrisy to new lows. And in this go-around, they're getting credit for it.