Welcome back, law and order Republicans, you tough-on-crime, gun-totin’ Wyatt Earp-worshipping scallywags. You’ve been on vacation, vacay now, for what, five, no seven years.

In January 2017, when Donald Trump was sworn in as president and put his hand on the Bible, which miraculously didn’t explode, that was your cue to go on holiday and quit preaching about the rule of law. Now here you are, back from your getaway. Quicker than you can say “hypocrite,” you’ve fallen back into familiar rhetoric about how people must be held accountable for the wicked they do. It’s just like old times.

In the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan and later George HW Bush in the White House, you really drove home that sermon about how the United States is a country of laws. There’s nothing more sacred than the rule of law, you said. You fought with civil libertarians who argued that your pro-comp agenda cut too many corners. Attorney General Ed Meese, a Republican, called the American Civil Liberties Union a “criminal’s lobby.” Conservatives passed three strikes laws and waged the war on drugs. Right-wingers were especially eager to drop the hammer if the alleged offender was Black or Latino. In your book, these people were inferior human beings from violent cultures who deserved no mercy. You said they grew up in dysfunctional families without values or discipline.

In fact, later in the 1990s, Republicans would pass anti-crime legislation that stiffened criminal penalties and fueled mass incarceration by putting away street thugs labeled super predators who “had to be brought to heel.” Wait, wait, wait, stop the tape. That doesn’t sound right. That last part about the 1990s doesn’t ring true. Oh, yeah. Now I remember. By the 1990s, it was Democrats who had jumped on the anti-crime bandwagon and decided to out-tough-guy the Republicans. It was a Democrat, a Delaware senator named Joe Biden, I wonder whatever happened to him, who wrote the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, better known as the 1994 crime bill.

It was also a Democrat Hillary Clinton, who invoked the racist imagery of young black men as quote predators who were acting like rabid dogs that had to be treated as such. Be that as it may before Trump was elected, the GOP brand was solidly pro law and order. The con man in chief changed all that. That’s when the Republican Law and Order types went into hiding. In four years, Trump issued 143 pardons, including many to allies, supporters, donors and former business associates. He declared, quote, good people. Those white supremacists and tiki torch carrying demonstrators at the University of Virginia, who chanted, quote, Jews will not replace us.

He also tried to rigged the vote count in Georgia and soak the unrest that led to the riots on January 6 2021, in which a violent mob knocked to the ground, Washington DC police officers and yelled things like, quote, kill him with his own gun. When Trump finally left office, he took hundreds of classified documents and then refused to turn them over to the National Archives when they asked nicely. Later, when the FBI not so nicely stormed into Mar Lago and retrieved the documents. What did Trump and his supporters do they vilified the federal agents.

Now, as he runs for reelection, Trump faces 91 counts spread across for criminal cases. And response, Trump’s conservative supporters became defense lawyers. They criticized the prosecution of Trump as being more like a persecution and they claim the charges were politically motivated. So much for law and order. Now, it’s a new day, we’re back to where we started. The old rule of law Republicans are back with their old sermon about how everyone has to follow along. What brought them home. In a word immigration. undocumented migrants are streaming across the US Mexico border and disrespecting our country. Conservatives say worse, say the right wingers. The supporters of these lawbreakers are making excuses for them.

I know exactly what you mean, folks. Don’t you just hate when that happens?