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Look at them run.
The Alabama Republican congressional delegation has never moved faster. Running away from constituents. Running away from responsibility. Running away from their oaths of office.
Life in the GOP has been a bit rough of late, as the party of cowards – afraid to question the unconstitutional, anti-American acts of the president they’ve long praised – have been feeling the heat from voters over what can only be (kindly) called an unmitigated disaster for the American public since Donald Trump was elected.
Since the wanna-be dictator and his South African immigrant co-president began ripping the country to shreds, ignoring federal court orders and flushing the constitution, the economy has gone to absolute hell, and along with it the lives of American consumers. And, surprise, the folks who elected a 34-time felon largely on the promise that he’d make groceries cheaper and home loans more affordable are bit peeved that he’s done the opposite.
It’s particularly problematic that he’s done the opposite while also acting like a raving lunatic who’s living up to the libs’ concerns about autocracy.
But we have three branches of government (much to Tommy Tuberville’s chagrin), and the good people have been lining up at Republican town halls over the past month or so demanding to know just where in the hell their cheaper eggs and better livin’ is and what they plan to do about all of the … weirdness.
Here’s the thing about cowards though: They’re not usually cowards just some of the time.
If you expected the folks who couldn’t bring themselves to wrestle control of the party away from a reality TV star who has literally never spoken intelligently about a single policy initiative in his life, well, you were wrong. Instead, they’ve done exactly what you should have expected them to do.
Run.
No town halls for them. But don’t worry, they had good reasons.
Gary Palmer blamed his running on “paid agitators.” Those paid agitators have been coming down South now since the days of Bull Connor and fire hoses, and we still haven’t found a conservative to stand up to them.
Dale Strong blamed his cowardice on “left-wing liberals.” While it’s probably true that some left-wingers would be in the crowd at the town hall he was invited to attend, the last I checked, those left-wingers paid taxes that paid Strong’s salary.
Mike Rogers went old school bigot and blamed his fear of constituent interaction on the great Jewish boogeyman, George Soros. Because … of course.
It’s all so pathetic. And transparent.
No one buys this nonsense. Not even the maga cultists who still buy into the notion that Trump has some grand plan that will ultimately help average Americans. (He doesn’t.) Even those folks know these dudes are running because they’re too afraid to face the people they’re supposed to serve.
The reality is the people who are angry and showing up to these town halls aren’t a bunch of liberals, and they’re damn sure not a bunch of “paid agitators.” Have you watched the videos from these town halls? The people talking are veterans, registered Republicans, independents and really, really ticked off constituents who live in those representatives’ districts.
And they’re showing up by the thousands in some places.
Because they want answers. Better answers than Strong telling people that the thousands of lost jobs in the Huntsville area is no biggie because the local economy can withstand it. They want something more than these guys insisting that Trump is popular and that the economy is “fixing to take off.”
The facts are that Trump isn’t popular. He has the lowest approval ratings at this point of any president in U.S. history, and they’re sinking lower every week. His co-president’s approval ratings are even lower. The work of the slash-and-burn DOGE is tremendously unpopular. And the approval ratings of the Republican-controlled House and Senate are at abysmal lows.
That’s because outside of the billionaire bubble, where average people aren’t getting White House lawn commercials to help them, many Americans are having a hard time. And they’re watching an administration that promised to fix things immediately do everything but, and also do a lot of really, really awful things and even more legally questionable things.
They want answers. They want someone – preferably some adults – to step in and do something. They want, at the very least, to have their elected representatives to stand in front of them and hear their anger, their struggles and their fears. They deserve at least that much.
They deserve better than the cowardice they’ve been getting.
