REPUBLICANS AREN'T COWARDS FOR FALLING IN LINE BEHIND TRUMP -- THEY'RE WORSE

Very few Republicans have denounced President Trump's Muslim ban, and the ones who have denounced it have done so with a lot of "both sides do it" language:

Sasse on Refugee/Visa order: "this order is too broad. " pic.twitter.com/xCKNewrEHZ

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 28, 2017

For the most part, Republicans are saying nothing, even though a number of them -- Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Mike Pence -- denounced the idea when Trump first raised it in late 2015. A lot of people on the left are responding to this the way Daily Kos's David Nir has:

Cowardly Republicans go utterly silent in the face of Trump's cruelty to refugees and immigrants

Nahhh -- these people aren't cowards. They're worse.

They don't fear speaking out. They just don't care about the people affected by the ban. All they care about is what Republicans have focused on for years: power for themselves and tax and regulatory cuts for their donors. Nothing else matters.

This isn't a moral issue for them. For them, it's like the moral puzzle that forms the basis of the movie The Box and the Twilight Zone episode "Button, Button": Imagine if you could obtain a million dollars, and all you had to do was remotely kill someone you've never met. Would you do it?

That's what tacit support for Trump's policies is now: You give him leeway, you get those tax and regulatory cuts for the rich, and the only downside is the suffering of people you don't care about.

Yes, as I noted, many prominent Republicans denounced this idea in 2015. But that was when they believed that Trump wouldn't win the nomination, much less the general election, and they thought his advocacy of this policy would hurt their chances of being in a position to cut rich people's taxes and regulations. Now that they know that this wasn't an impediment, they're back to not caring who gets hurt.

That's not cowardice. It's amorality, which is worse.