In October, 1973 Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refused and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus similarly refused and was forced out. Finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork agreed to fire Cox. A few days later the Nixon administration ordered a worldwide military alert of U.S. forces, including nuclear weapons.

We don’t need to rely on Russian bots to fill our email and news feeds with false history. The Republican Party and the Trump administration have that well in hand, demonstrated by a selective and probably ineffective airstrike on Syria April 13 that closed with Trump reviving Bush’s false claim at the end of the Iraq war: “Mission Accomplished.”

There is a surprising level of grave-dancing from a party that just a year ago lost a presidential race to one of the most absurd candidates to ever run for the nation’s highest office.

Our acquaintances on the Left are not the only ones exposing their bilious natures today at the retirement of Paul Ryan from public life. Too many of my fellow conservatives are bidding good riddance to what they call a RINO — a Republican in name only. Most of whom never bothered to run for elective office or made much of a difference if they did.

Just when you think the United States will join most of the rest of the civilized world and outlaw the death penalty, along comes Donald Trump.

It’s time we Republicans stop feeling sorry for ourselves and fight back! As Republicans, we’ve come too far to just let it all go.

We deserve to be optimistic. We deserve to feel hope. But we must also take caution against complacency.