If they aren't supporting convicted or accused criminals, they're speaking fondly of tyrants like North Korea's Kim Jong Un and Russia's Vladimir Putin. When did the party decide bad is good?

If Cruella de Vil, the evil, dog-fur-coat-craving heiress in the novel “The Hundred and One Dalmatians,” hadn’t been featured in a Disney movie, she’d likely be a hero to present-day Republicans.

They seem to have a thing for villains. The two front-runners for the GOP presidential nomination are Donald Trump – an election-denying, insult-hurling, and thoroughly indicted former president – and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – a bully whose primary targets include teachers, LGBTQ youth and, as he clearly demonstrated late last week by signing a draconian six-week abortion ban, women who want control over their own bodies.

But alas, Cruella can’t join the fold of favored fiends. The Disney connection dooms her. That company, according to DeSantis and other Republicans, is “woke.” And woke, you see, is evil.

It's confusing, but in today's GOP, 'bad' is 'good'

I can already hear your confusion. Aren’t I premising this column on the idea that Republicans are embracing villains? And if so, shouldn’t evil actually be good?

It’s complicated. Someone “bad” is only “good” when that person fits perfectly, like a laser-cut jigsaw piece, into the puzzle that is the right-wing ecosystem.

For example, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, Jack Teixeira, was arrested last week and charged with leaking classified military documents online. In normal America, this would be considered “bad.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene gives suspected classified document leaker Jack Teixeira a big ol' hug

Enter one Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is the face of House Republicans, whether they like it or not. After the suspect's arrest, she tweeted: “Jake Teixeira is white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. Ask yourself who is the real enemy?”

I did ask myself who the real enemy is – in fact I asked myself several times, just to be sure – and the answer always came up: the guy charged with an array of crimes relating to the leaking of classified documents.

But again, that’s in normal America. In much of right-wing-echo-chamber America, however, the alleged actions Teixeira took were embraced. He fits right into the puzzle, in part because, as Greene noted, he’s “white, male, christian” and his case can be twisted into a grievance against the Biden administration. Welcome home, Jack.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants to pardon a convicted murderer

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced he’s going to do all he can to pardon Daniel Perry, an Army sergeant who was found guilty this month of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020. This came after Fox News’ Tucker Carlson hollered about Perry’s conviction, calling it “a legal atrocity.”

In the right-wing fever swamps, anyone associated with Black Lives Matter is always the bad guy. And that old Republican tough-on-crime idea? That only applies if the crime fits the puzzle, and this one clearly didn’t.

Oops! Turns out the convicted murderer also sent a bunch of racist messages

But it gets worse. Shortly after Abbott went to bat for the convicted murderer, more court documents from the case were unsealed. They included an array of private messages from Perry that are wildly racist. So now Abbott and Carlson and all who’ve tried to make Perry a cause célèbre on the right have their arms around a racist murderer. Bad is good, good is bad. What a world.

Speaking of crimes and unsavory characters, former President Trump has not only been indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, he’s facing an array of other investigations ranging from election interference to a possible violation of the Espionage Act.

He’ll also go on trial later this month in a civil lawsuit alleging defamation and sexual assault. That all sounds downright villainous, but many Republicans still love him, and he remains the favorite to win the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

Maybe it’s because he also loves bad guys.

Donald Trump clearly has a thing for tyrants

In a recent interview with Carlson on Fox News, Trump described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “top of the line.”

Of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said that he “is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find – there’s nobody like that. The look, the brain, the whole thing.”

The brutal North Korean dictator? Trump said: “Kim Jong Un is smart too. You know, when you come out and as a young man at 24, 23, even though he sort of inherits it, most people when they inherit, they lose it. And that’s easy stuff. He took over a country, a very smart people, very, very energetic people, very tough people at a very young age. And he has total dominant control. That’s not easy.”

Have Republicans met a tyrant they don’t like in recent years? (I welcome your emails saying “BIDEN IS A TYRANT AND YOUR AN IDIOT!!!” Thank you for proving my point.)

And lest we forget, the 'heroes' who attacked the U.S. Capitol

Don’t forget all the violent MAGA mopes in prison for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Carlson, Greene, Trump, and other notable noisemakers routinely frame them as patriotic victims of an unjust system.

So the ones who beat up all the police officers and expressed a pressing desire to hang Vice President Mike Pence are now the good guys if you’re part of the pro-villain wing of the Republican Party.

It’s a strange time to be alive. I’m telling you, if Cruella hadn’t been in that Disney flick, she’d probably be a GOP-vice-presidential-candidate-in-waiting, making a killing selling faux-dog-fur coats at MAGA rallies.

Source: Rex Huppke/USA Today.com

Date Posted: Monday, April 17th, 2023 , Total Page Views: 2779