Even as Trump caves and agrees to sign legislation to end the budget funding crisis, he has promised to declare a national emergency, in order to build a wall between the USA and Mexico.

Today the Washington Post has published a damning OpEd piece, Trump’s presidency enters a new imperial phase — and Mitch McConnell just rolls over

By Editorial Board
February 14 at 7:17 PM

ADMITTEDLY, IT is an overworked trope. “Imagine how Republicans would have responded if Barack Obama had tried this!” Democrats exclaim at each fresh outrage. In the case of President Trump’s plan to declare an emergency to build a border wall, it is certainly apt; the Freedom Caucus (including Mick Mulvaney, now Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff) would have been apoplectic. But in considering this phony emergency conjured cynically for electoral advantage, it is more apt to imagine the future than the past.

Imagine indeed if, two years from now, a President Booker, Harris, Warren or Bennet, seizing on the Parkland massacre’s anniversary, invoked emergency powers to halt the killing of innocents — by banning the sale of semiautomatic weapons, imposing uniform background checks for gun purchases or levying a stiff federal surtax on the sale of gun parts and ammunition.

If an emergency can be manufactured over border security when illegal border crossings are near a 20-year low, as measured by Border Patrol arrests, then it’s a snap to make the case for an emergency over gun deaths, which are near a 20-year high.

I honestly thought that at some point members of the GOP would wake up and realize that they are on the verge of totally abandoning their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. If they kowtow to Trump and do not destroy this ridiculous emergency declaration, then they have crossed a Rubicon that can not be uncrossed.

They will have clearly, once and for all, demonstrated that they are the party of self-interest, the One Percent, and that they have absolutely no regard for the Rule of Law under the Constitution, that was designed with a balance of powers that was supposed to prevent the emergence and seizing of power by autocrats, kings, and dictators. Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin are spinning in their graves right now, so fast that if we could harness the energy, we could get rid of coal completely right now and light up the entire nation.

Worst of all is the utter, rank hypocrisy. If a Democratic president tried to pull a stunt like this, they would impeach him in a nanosecond. If a GOP president does it, they roll their eyes and whistle while looking the other way. Rank, malodorous hypocrisy is in fact now a defining trait of the GOP. They have abandoned all pretense of objective adherence to reality, facts, and science, and behavior they excoriate in Democrats is just double plus OK if committed by a member of the GOP. And yes, that is a reference to Orwell, because events right now are about as Orwellian as you can imagine.

The American People must go to the polls in droves in just under two years, overwhelm the gerrymandering and the attempt to remove opposition voters from the polls the GOP have engaged in, and send every last member of this party into the dustbin of history, where they belong.

The GOP is a clear and present danger to the continued viability of the Republic.