So, why haven't I been blogging?

A funny thing happened on the way to writing my last blog a couple of weeks ago. I stopped to think. And, I kinda got stuck.

Now, imagine me with my mouth open, my eyes glazed and my brain in a kind of permanent short circuit. That’s what I get for following the news.

Did Donald Trump say those things? And did he do it again? Did the Russians really make such a poor investment? Did all our foreign allies really not throw anything at the President?

Well, even before the investigations started looking like they would get into high gear - or at least out of first gear - I began to think I really should write something about Mike Pence, our heartbeat away guy. So I read his local papers, and some commentary and some magazine articles, and I looked up some of the laws in his state dealing with health care and abortions and other things.

Long story short, I discovered that Rolling Stone had already done a far better job in writing about Mike Pence than I ever could. So, hats off to them.

Then I started adding up how many days Trump has been on vacation, and how many weekends he has been at his golf resort/private Florida club/undercover Russian contact point. Were those tourists taking pictures of his secret high-level meetings really Soviet spies? If you can declassify anything because you are the President, can he simply declassify everything his team gave to the Russians and - presto- no crime!

Heck, why didn’t Richard Nixon pardon himself? Answer - Donald Trump was smarter! Choke on that, you loyal Republicans who are lining up behind the Trumpster in such a tight lock-step that there isn’t enough room to breathe.

Then my mind took a quantum leap. What, I began to wonder, is a Republican these days. A little voice whispered it’s just someone who comes from a gerrymandered district, so out of touch with the mainstream that they have redefined the party.  And, not a math teacher in the bunch.

The next stage of my bewilderment was blame. I blamed Hillary and the rest of the Democrats for running a really lousy campaign, and for ignoring a big chunk of the country. I blamed the younger Democrats for not doing more to take a real role in picking a candidate and taking over the machinery of the Democratic Party. 

Then I blamed the people who might have changed the outcome of the election had they actually bothered to vote. Finally, I blamed the Republicans who held their nose and just voted for Trump because they didn’t like any of their other candidates any better, and at least they had seen him on TV.

So, after blaming everybody for Donald Trump - well, almost everybody - I realized that if you spread the blame around far enough, no one is really responsible for him. That’s what kept my eyes glazed and my mouth open so long...picking out the best candidate to get most of the blame.

And, it finally came to me. It was as clear as the nose on my face.

The Republican Party is supposed to stand for something, and what it stands for isn’t supposed to change with every exit poll and every primary. You could say it stands for lowering taxes for the rich. Or you could say it stands for a new detente with the Russians.

Or it stands for breaking existing deals and trade arrangements with other countries, while saying it is perfectly fine for the United States to demand those countries live up to all their agreements. 

“We will demand you pay more of your national treasure into paying higher salaries for NATO troops in your country,  and we can impose tariffs whenever we want on your imports,” is probably the new theme, just as soon as they can find someone to smooth out the contradictions.

Well, that is of course, an exaggeration. There are honorable Republicans, people who really believe what they say. And there are some dumb government policies that deserve to be changed. Can’t argue with that one.

Still, I would like to see some of them say what, if anything, they think the President is doing. Maybe something about not running the country like a family business, or maybe something about leaving hundreds of necessary jobs unfilled.

Or maybe just adopting a policy about anything that doesn’t change from week to week. 

You know, just show me the health plan you have - the one that covers more people at lower cost and provides better care.

I’m still waiting for that one.