Profiles in Republican courage

All cowards please raise their hands.

RIP, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin. As Omar from “The Wire” liked to say: “You come at the king, you best not miss.” Or, in Prigozhin’s case, you roll tanks toward the Kremlin, you’d best not dither and strut and generally fuck around while the boss arranges a suitable reward. 

Everyone knew Prigozhin was toast the day he pointed his mercenaries at Moscow. Putin throws people out of windows for a lot less than that. The actual method of his demise, along with nine others as collateral damage, suggests that Putin wanted this murder to be something special. Defenestration was becoming passe. Knocking a jet out of the sky in view of video cameras was just a bit more theatrical.

At least the late Mr. Prigozhin showed some sort of quixotic courage, daring, if only briefly, to challenge his infinitely corrupt boss. The hapless saps at Wednesday’s GOP debate couldn’t even do that.  Why, exactly, are any of them running? For any of them to win, Trump has to lose. Right? Yet they all (except Chris Christie) just insulted each other and pretended to care about policies. Coming at the king was something they were implicitly doing, all while mightily pretending they weren’t. Look at how the hands shot up when asked if they’d support the infinitely corrupt Trump. It’s like the question was who wanted ice cream.

Quite the crop of would-be leaders. Their presence at the debate meant they all want Trump gone, but they all remain too scared of his lumpen legions to come out and say so. Or even, really, to mention his name in any context beyond tepid concern or fawning praise. They’ll attack each other over negligible differences in ways to punish the “woke,” but they will never, ever, explicitly denounce Jabba the Nut, the obese loon from Mar-A-Lago. Which is pretty amazing when you consider his numerous indictments and that laughable mugshot, in which he glowers like a B-movie villain. 

These are not serious people. Yevgeny Prigozhin wasn’t either, but at least he was willing to put himself in harm’s way.