A few days ago a national headline caught my eye. It proclaimed that GOP leadership believes “Everything’s great” across the county.
I immediately began humming “Everything is Awesome,” the sarcastic song made famous in The Lego Movie. Tongue-in-cheek, the refrain continually declares everything awesome no matter how inappropriate (“I lost my job”) or nonsensical (“Rocks, clocks, and socks, they’re awesome”).
The song fits perfectly for a party that still finds itself caught in the vortex created by a president who made the phrase “person, woman, man, camera, TV” a part of the American lexicon. For four years the party faithful have cheered every rambling news conference, every garrulous stump speech, and every verbose Twitter thread.
The transformation is so complete, it is difficult to tell whether “side by side you and I are gonna win forever” is a Trump rallying cry or a lyric from The Lonely Island.
Does it even matter? As the song says, “everything you see or think or say is awesome.” At least when it comes to Republicans’ belief in Trump.
And that is a lot of what the GOP dilemma boils down to at the moment. Team Trump has so fully consumed the Republican Party that any utterance he makes becomes etched in tablets of stone truth for most of its members.
