“Why didn’t he do it before?”
“Why doesn’t he stay and fight?”
“Why does he still vote with the president on taxes and judges?”
Those are the questions asked when a Republican official breaks with President Trump. They are fair questions too, as far as they go, and they will only become fairer over time. October 2017 is already late to recognize Donald Trump for what he is and what he is doing, and next year will be later, and the year after that later still. Someday, I’m sure, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan will unburden himself of the agonies he felt during all the time he enabled and empowered this president to do the harm under which Ryan writhed.
Yet from a political rather than a moral point of view, the question, “Where were you when it counted?” is the wrong question. It always counts. It counted then, it counts now, it will count in future.
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