Seriously, the GOP is going to sit back and "see what happens"?
Remember, Republicans have been arguing for
years that government does not and cannot properly work. Given a choice between governing the country and proving their thesis, the GOP has chosen, and now we know these conservatives for who and what they are.
What the rest of us learn is that the only conservative you can trust is in no condition to betray you, and thus in no condition to say anything in the first place. Republican "wisdom" is best examined posthumously.
Hatred is the key. The difference is that we might look at the argument and say, "See, this would have hurt people," and the conservative would argue with the professor and say, "You can't prove that until it does!" And we can point to history and how it happens over and over, and the conservative will argue that we either need to hurt some people in order to prove it or shut the hell up.
Hatred. Through and through. Waiting for conservatives to demonstrate otherwise gets people killed.
Sitting back and seeing what happens allows President Trump to carry forth the dysfunctional agenda Republicans have sought for years; they won't stop him because during all those years when the denunciations of inhumane GOP policy and everyone else rushed to equivocate because it's unfair to say that about people, well, that's what they were up to. Equivocation turned out to be complicity, an act of aid and comfort. And maybe it's one thing to say they didn't think it would go that far, but there are clear reasons to not believe them. Sit back? See what happens? This is the great conservative hope. This is their moment. This is what they've been working toward the whole time. This is who they've been the whole time.
As a general thesis, I occasionally suggest revolutionaries, achieving some manner of success by seizing authority, tend to roll rightward and consolidate their power just like any other institutional influence. We see this throughout the Marxist revolutions, which have failed to evolve from the dictatorship of the proletariat into anything other than tyranny. And in the case of the American Revolution, we weren't out to smash the imperial system, merely usurp it. That's why we insisted on forfeiting the Revolution straightaway, first with the Articles, and then with the Constitution, both of which betrayed the Declaration. And we've been having that argument ever since.
As for waiting to see what happens, the GOP has become something of a caricature of old stereotypes. To wit, when I was young, and my notions of history and politics and juristics began formulating, there were some old references from gangster movies, and some comedic bits about car salesmen, private-sector attorneys, and so on, describing almost stereotypically what were considered common sketchy business practices. Republicans have become caricatures of these stereotypes, and recursively, at that. Imagine fifty years of making excuses and sheltering behind pretenses that it would be rude of me to suggest this is what you're actually doing, and what could you accomplish in that time, with populist mobs cheering you on? That's basically the GOP during the period of Democratic Party crisis that seems to have been taking place since the '68 convention. The Democratic reputation since then is to prefer to not have a reputation; the Republican reputation since then is to be evil, except it would have been rude to actually say so, and now here we are.
