Donald Trump: Republican

Alex Parene patiently explains what some of us have nearly exasperated ourselves trying to say all the while.  The substantive policy direction of the Trump Presidency is proceeding precisely the way any Republican presidency would be expected to. Yeah Trump is also exceedingly crude and stupid. But that's just style points, really.

Trump himself is abnormal. The actions of his administration, with a few notable exceptions, are not. Democrats need to disabuse the Amy Siskinds of the country of their belief that more genteel Republicans would act more responsibly.

The hook may change with the fashion of the day, but the program remains the same. We tried to point this out a few years ago when people were trying to explain there is some sort of difference between Steve Scalise and David Duke we are supposed to care about. We thought that was nonsense.

Now here we are in the time of Trump and Scalise is back in the news. Yes, he was the victim of a horrific shooting incident which we all condemn. But he also just voted to pass AHCA out of the House enabling probably the most deadly of Trump's policy initiatives to date not including the ones that involved actually dropping bombs on people.  Certain folks seem to think that there's some significant difference between the Republicans making the policy and the Republican selling the policy this time around for some reason. Not sure why that is.