Sunday, July 24, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Even after a number of televised hearings by the Jan. 6 committee, polls show Republicans are still not much concerned about former President Donald Trump’s corrupt behavior in contesting the 2020 election. They were not much more concerned back when Republican Richard Nixon was caught directing the Watergate burglary.
For that matter, Republicans today are about as little moved as they were when Republican presidents like Ulysses S. Grant, Chester Arthur, and Warren G. Harding gave the nation a boatload of corruption in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
What Democrats never seem to understand is that a little corruption, or a lot of it, is not a big deal for Republicans. That is because corruption usually involves money. What money does and buys is always good, even when it buys elections, as it did with Republican William McKinley’s election in 1896. It doesn’t faze most Republicans even when it buys tyranny, which apparently has its merits too.
With corporate Republicans, domestic corruption — and a little violence now and again — is just a cost of doing business. It’s a little like the cost of bribes to foreign leaders to aid overseas business development and the occasional roughhousing of foreign governments, as in the case of Republican Ronald Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair.
Trump and his followers have been clear about all the fuss since Jan. 6. All the whiners should just go home and grow up, or maybe try to grow their bank accounts a little.
