Republicans made the weather. Now they stand in the rain and say “s***, it’s raining!”

There’s a line in the film Cold Mountain, about a western North Carolina village during the Civil War, that has always stood out to me. In it, Ruby (Renee Zellweger) laments the current crisis engulfing their land. “Every piece of this is man’s bullshit,” she sobs. “They call this war a cloud over the land, but they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say ‘shit, it’s raining!’”

That line has been on my mind a lot lately as I’ve seen reports — like this from CNN’s Jamie Gangel — that House Republicans want to vote to impeach Donald Trump for his role in last week’s violent insurrection at the Capitol, but that “they legitimately fear for their lives and their families’ lives.” That any member of Congress should live in mortal terror over a House vote is appalling and should be unequivocally condemned. I am outraged that this is where we are as a nation, and my sympathy is with those frightened Representatives.

But every piece of this is the GOP’s bullshit. They made the weather, and now they stand in the rain and say ‘shit, it’s raining!’

When the Republican Party threw its lot in with Donald Trump, who from the moment he came down that golden escalator started spouting off white nationalist and fascistic talking points, what did they think was going to happen? When they started courting votes from people who march through the streets of Virginia shouting “Jews will not replace us” and who storm state capitols with guns and plot to kidnap governors, did they honestly think the crowd would never come for them?

I always knew this moment would come. The moment when Republicans realised they’d lost control of the beast they thought they’d tamed, like when Roy of Sigfried and Roy was mauled by his tiger. It was inevitable. There was always going to come a time when elected Republicans found their interests no longer aligned with the armed and braying mob they had spent years whipping into a frenzy, nor with the demagogic leader…