Maxine Waters is a lunatic and her calls to harass Trump administration officials in public is only one among many stupid things she has said or done. I just don’t understand why so many unconditional backers of President Trump can act surprised or even offended that she would say something like this or that a restaurant would give Trump’s Press Secretary the boot. This is exactly the kind of political climate and discourse that they wanted.

Fight fire with fire! A taste of their own medicine! Own the libs! New rules! But he fights!

These inanities and many others similar to them have been the rally cries of the red-capped Trump cheerleading squad for several years now. Nothing about Trump’s boorish and coarse behavior mattered. Nothing about his knee jerk dishonesty whenever faced with potential scandal or problem mattered. Now they’re actually going to lecture people about civility? Come on.

Trump was 100% correct that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue and not lose any support. If pressed he would certainly say that was a joke and it may have been, but it is still true. Hell, depending on who he shot at the time, Trump might have sooner earned the allegiance of his squishier critics who instead waited until after his nomination to reveal their lack of seriousness.

By any objective standard, Trump is a petty, mean, vindictive, and childish bully. I’ll grant that some of that has helped him deliver on some things nominally conservative people like, but contrary to the Neo-Trumpers (those who once declared him a con man but now defend his every word and deed), most of those who opposed Trump’s nomination and have been critical of his behavior have been pretty fair with the President when it comes to policy. Most critics never said that he wouldn’t push the needle to the right on some things. We only said it was going to come with a price to pay down the road.

The “controversy” over Maxine Waters being Maxine Waters is just one of the first installments.

Trump’s greatest victory is making everyone act like him.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) June 24, 2018

I have always believed that as conservatives part of our strategy should be to sway rational (even if misguided) people from sympathizing with the left. I have said from the beginning of this unfortunate slide into reality show politics that lowering ourselves to the left’s level is a bad idea. There is no bottom for the left. They will sink to whatever level they feel they need to to achieve their goals. They always have room to go lower.

There’s an old saying about not wrestling with a pig. Republicans haven’t only ignored it, they have elected their own pig and ordered another truckload of extra-stinky mud.

I still say it is too large a price to pay for some short term gains that will mostly vanish with the next pendulum swing.  (I certainly hope that the MAGA crowd doesn’t believe they have forever vanquished the leftists by electing Trump.) Physics tells us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In politics there is almost always an opposite overreaction. With the right’s decision to formally abdicate it’s traditional role as adult in the room, there’s no telling where we’ll end up the next time Democrats are in the driver’s seat.

So here we are in 2018 and people who once chided me for wanting Republicans to stand firm on not raising the debt ceiling—because, while fiscally responsible, it was too provocative and bad for public relations—now embrace the provocation and bad PR for its own sake and rationalize bloated budgets. The small piece of the media controlled by the right has become a carnival-mirror reflection of the Democrat-media complex we once opposed, and people who wholeheartedly embraced the most obnoxious and easily caricatured Republican candidate possible are upset that Democrats are being uncivil.

Send your hate mail to me on Twitter @Anthropocon or on Facebook at Jim Jamitis, Pundit. XOXO