GOP bootlicking runs rampant

“I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said,” conservative William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in his book “God and Man at Yale.”

I cannot help but remember the myriad declarations of most leading Republican leaders in the presidential race. They not only denounced Donald Trump but cast serious aspersions and strong criticisms of his politics and caustic rhetoric. Many of these leaders even remarked in the public forum that Trump was no longer a member of their party.

What a difference a surprise Trump win has had on all these honorable and morally just leaders. Apparently, all of those remarks are now to be forgotten – and politics in Washington, D.C., is once again to be business as usual. Every one of these people seems to be happily licking the new president’s boots looking to curry his favor.

Are we the people expected to forget and forgive all of this pre-election rhetoric and to delude ourselves that all is now well with the Republican Party and Washington politics in general?

Quoting William Hazlitt, the English essayist: “The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.”

This story was originally published January 24, 2017 at 11:27 AM with the headline "GOP bootlicking runs rampant."