For Republicans, the impeachment of Trump is not really about impeaching Trump. With some exceptions along the Barr-Nunes-Jordan Axis of Vile, they loathe him personally. Stands to reason they are fighting for something they do care about.

A thread on what that is.

Sure, there are individual GOPers protecting themselves because they are complicit in actual treason or merely corrupt, but that doesn’t explain the maximum effort seen in the broader institutional support for Trump.

Why, then? Simple: to establish as a norm the same shit they now have to fight to do. To formalize a system in which there are no rules for Republicans. In which rules, and laws (to be gleefully enforced in their Kavanaughed courts) apply only to Democrats.

For this purpose, Trump is their perfect agent. He breaks every category of law. Sexual assault of children. Fraud. Tax evasion. Treason. Theft and misappropriation of public funds, from taxpayer money to his properties to hedging money in markets he manipulates with a tweet.

Nepotism. Handing US bases to Putin. Destruction of alliances. Kidnapping and torture of children. Repurposing government institutions for fun, profit and political vendettas. Ending Constitutional oversight. Support for murder of Khashoggi and Russian nerve gas attack in UK.

Outrages against the environment. Privatization of public lands. Support for Nazis and KKK. Calling for violence against journalists, whistleblowers and critics. Threatening the country with civil war and depression. Sale of the Oval Office itself to the enemy.

The thuggish GOP might not like all of it, but by comparison the stuff they’ll do, given the free rein this is all about, will seem like a game of tiddlywinks. They will steal. It’s what they do. That $2 trillion tax cut? Just a transfer of wealth to the top floor. Expect more.

Meanwhile, if a Democratic President so much as asks for a dab of Grey Poupon for his hot dog or wears a tan suit, the nutjobs need their smelling salts.

Hillary sends some emails and it’s still all Hannity talks about. Trump and his crooked punk cronies and children do it, or talk on cellphones so Vladimir can hear everything, and it’s okay.

Rules? For Republicans? Um, no, thank you. Rules are for Democrats.

The right wing can not maintain political power without cheating. Election security? You’ve got to be kidding. Gerrymandering? All they can get. Forget acid - just look at a map of Jim Jordan’s Ohio district if you really want to trip sometime.

So, while the Mitt Romneys and Will Hurts of the world might occasionally act like they stepped in pig shit with a fresh pedicure, not really. They know Trump is too profoundly vapid and distracted by greed and servitude to Putin to understand his true value. But they get it.

The goal is simple. You know how the word ‘normalize’ has been... well, normalized? It means making something bad acceptable. The right wing project is the normalization of political criminality. The destruction of American democratic systems and expectations—norms—is the means.

They must normalize their theft of the national machine that prints the money and the subjugation and killing of the poor and dispossessed it takes. You can’t get all the money if juicy slices go to healthcare, retirement benefits, education, veterans, day care, etc.

You can’t get all the dough if people aren’t made to service so much personal debt that they have to work for slave wages. You can’t get it all if you don’t make low earners pay high taxes and high earners pay none.

The more poor people there are, the smaller the size to which the middle class can be shrunk, the more money there is for the zero tax mega corporations and billionaire TV preachers and fat ass mint julep sipping buddies of #MoscowMitch McConnell.

Not to mention the money to be made in straight-up corruption in office. It was hard work for #MoscowMitch to pocket the $80 million he’s made in the Senate before Citizens United legalized bribery. Now it’s a piece of cake. Thank you gangsta Supremes. Big help.

And if GOP starts having a hard time keeping half the population convinced that entitlements are freebies that lazy or dark people *feel* entitled to, instead of the things Americans *are* entitled to because they damn well paid for them, well, Kavanaugh’ll deliver. He owes.

And they are succeeding. Already granted that the Senate will acquit. Bingo! Normalized that one pretty good, bud. Trump will see that as exoneration, but not them. They will see it as a win in their strategic war on American democracy. Normalizing has been normalized.

Acquittal buys more time for Trump to flex the limits of control they will inherit. And even if Senate somehow convicts and removes, the pieces on their board will still have been advanced. Today we cage the toddlers, tomorrow we cage you. The GOP MO is all crime, all the time.

They know Trump might lose in 2020. But if he does, no biggie. Dems will be kindly cops, scared of the GOP gang, calling for peace and unity, no prosecutions lest they appear political, while the GOP keeps criming while they lie in wait.

When we on the left talk about rule of law or ethics, we tend to mean it. We even go overboard. Katie Hill? Al Franken? C’mon, man. But the thugs run their Roy Moores and Corey Lewandowskis for Senate and make their Matt Whitakers and Bill Barrs Attorney General.

Because they’re criminals. And that’s what they’re fighting for. Long after Trump is gone and stinking up some fake gold plated toilet of a mausoleum that’s what they’ll be. The vilest, most greedy and hateful gang America has ever seen. Inheritors of the whips of slavemasters.

That’s what this impeachment is about for them. Once he is acquited in the Senate, our job is going to be to make sure that every American who doesn’t like thugs understands the depth of the criminality, the racism and greed that defines the GOP. They are traitors.

The GOP motto should be Legalize Crime. It would be the first honest thing they’ve said in years.

Fuck them.

If you made it this far and you think this perspective is worth considering, please scroll up and RT the first tweet in the thread.