I often responded to posts on Facebook that directed readers to articles that told us that Republicans were about to expose this or that bit of wrongdoing by the Democrats with “don’t hold your breath.”

The Republicans had a narrow window to affect substantial political change for our nation with the election of Donald Trump. They blew it.

They have refused to get behind Trump when he was riding high after the election and they had a majority of Americans on their side. Instead, they feared being attacked by the media.

It’s one of the reasons the GOP lost the House. Too many Republicans wanted to support the status quo. They like big government and do-nothingism unless what they do benefits them personally.

They like the Supreme Court because it keeps them from having to make hard political decisions. Better to let nine unelected judges take the heat for what they should be doing.

Consider these two Republican failures. Republican Gov. John Kasich failed to support House Bill 258 that would have banned “abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks into a woman’s pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant.”

The Republican-led Ohio House of Representatives voted 60-28 successfully to override the governor’s veto. It was a different outcome in the state Senate. The Ohio Senate subsequently failed to override the governor’s veto that same day, with just 19 senators voting in favor of the bill, with 20 votes needed for an override.” There are 24 Republicans in the Senate.

The excuse that Kasich used to veto the bill was that it would be deemed unconstitutional. That’s OK. Your job is to do what is morally right and appeal to the Constitution by claiming nullification based on the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

Then there’s this:

House Republicans unceremoniously ended their investigation into the way the FBI and the Department of Justice handled Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and the bias allegations against President Trump.

The House probe was led by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Judiciary Committee and sought to look into allegations that the FBI and the DOJ were biased against Trump during the 2016 presidential election and favored Clinton’s candidacy.

Two Republicans chairing the committees – Reps. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Robert Goodlatte, R-Va. – said in a letter Friday that the DOJ must appoint a special counsel to investigate the “seemingly disparate treatment” of the investigations into Clinton’s use of private emails and Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.

Republicans are all bluster. They hold hearings that go nowhere.

Pres. Trump is working to bring our troops home and get us out of foreign wars. One would think that the Republicans would get behind him. In fact, one would think the Democrats would join him in withdrawing our troops from endless “foreign entanglements” that cost lives and trillions of dollars that could be returned to taxpayers.

But we get opposition like this from a Republican:

Josh Rogin, writing at the Washington Post, contemplates the supposedly frightening shadow of Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) hovering over some of President Donald Trump’s recent foreign policy decisions. Rogin’s piece adds to some unsourced musings from Beltway types that the most influential adviser to Trump on foreign policy right now is not anyone on his staff or a member of the Pentagon brass, but the Kentucky senator known for his skepticism about endless foreign adventuring.

Rogin thinks it fair to say that Paul, via informal communication with golfing buddy Trump, “is quietly steering U.S. foreign policy in a new direction.” Among the public evidence for this is Trump tweet-quoting Paul after announcing his intention to pull U.S. troops from Syria on how “[it]t should not be the job of America to replace regimes around the world.”

Rogin claims that “Paul has a history of pushing false claims and theories.” Really? And those in the have never been wrong.

The implication, against all evidence, is that government foreign policy experts somehow do not “push…false claims and theories,” even though their beliefs about such matters as Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, and the supposedly positive aftereffects of toppling Middle Eastern dictators such as Saddam and Libyan Colonel Muammar Gadafi, have been disastrously wrong. (Reason)

President Eisenhower, who knew something about war, offered the following warning in his Farwell Address:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.

The Republican Party had a chance to make America great again but squandered the opportunity.