Jennifer Rubin: When did Republicans become such weaklings?

Washington Post

Republicans, especially in the era of President Trump, have adopted the swaggering tone and false bravado of high school athletes — heavy on trash talk but low on accomplishments. In 2016, Trump incited his followers to slug protesters; as president, he told cops to not be “too nice” putting suspects in police cars. Gun-toting MAGA protesters charged the Michigan Capitol to scream at security forces and threaten Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Trump orders federal forces to intimidate and attack peaceful protesters. Such bluster too often morphs into cruelty — toward children at the border, toward those unemployed through no fault of their own (slackers!). But more often than not, this is a party of sniveling victims and temper tantrums.

Trump is certainly the host of the pity party. He whines his approval ratings should be as high as those for respected doctors (whom he trashes). He moans that polls are rigged and concern about the pandemic is a “hoax,” meant to depress the economy and deprive him of a second term. (You would think an authoritarian wannabe would fear being seen as a crybaby by real autocrats such as Vladimir Putin.)

Trump’s allies in Congress are even worse. During what was otherwise one of the better congressional oversight hearings, Democrats grilled four tech executives — Tim Cook of Apple, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (who owns The Post), Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Google — on alleged predatory practices. Deploying evidence gathered over months of investigation, they probed and punched. Did Apple copy other companies’ apps and give preference to its own? Did Amazon gobble up data on third-party sellers to put them out of business? Had Google gone from a “turnstile” on the Internet to the destroyer of other search companies? And does Facebook buy other companies to control the market? Granted, Democrats frequently did not give the executives time to respond. But they asked germane questions that got to fundamental questions about monopolistic power and its adverse effect on competitors and consumers.

The Republicans? With few exceptions, they whined. Why wasn’t Trump’s son allowed to hawk hydroxychloroquine on Facebook? (It was on Twitter, and it was because the platform didn’t want unproven claims to endanger public health. The real question is why they let Trump do the same.) Why is it more difficult to find a story by a right-wing conspiracy mongering site on Google? (Maybe because relatively few people are interested in such blather?) They mostly groused that Facebook is “biased” against conservatives — even though some of the most trafficked items are from right-wing sites. The evidence was anecdotal, and it was all about them. They and their followers are victims, you see (despite talk radio, an entire cable TV “news” empire, Breitbart, Daily Caller and a horde of other mouthpieces for Trump). Such complaints have nothing to do with the lives of everyday Americans or the concerns for American entrepreneurs. They are about their exaggerated sense of victimhood.