Trumpism is a cult. Many of his supporters, especially Republican U.S. House members, no longer believe in a balanced budget. They no longer care about what used to be one of their major talking points, reducing the deficit, which is currently out of control at $23 trillion. Congressional Republicans no longer care about upholding our three branches of government, which represents the bottom line of my outrage about the cult of Trumpism.

Comparing Trump’s impeachment to Jesus Christ’s crucifixion during last week’s U.S. House hearing? Has the representative from Georgia suffered a lobotomy?

What happened to normal Republicans, true Conservatives like William F. Buckley? I didn’t agree with them but I listened. Real Republicans made sense. They didn’t mock disabled journalists or cage children on our Southern border or comment on House Speaker Pelosi’s “bad teeth.”

Consider former U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine. I liked her. She was a serious, compassionate senator, a true human being. Snowe supported a balanced budget. She supported Reagan’s 1980s Star Wars defense missile program, which was the reason I never voted for her (I told her so when she visited my Mt. Desert Island classroom. She chuckled good-naturedly).

When Snowe could no longer take being in the U.S. Senate and left in January 2013, she cited “hyper-partisanship leading to a dysfunctional Congress.”

Drinking multiple glasses of Chardonnay with Snowe at a small Bar Harbor cocktail party, following Bill Clinton’s impeachment on December 19, 1998 on the grounds of perjury to a grand jury, I applauded her civilized behavior.

“And the public has no idea what [members of my political party] wanted to do to Clinton. It was obscene,” she told me.

Throughout our history there has been division in Congress but there has been bipartisanship, too. No more. I worry but I hope that we are not at the point of no return. May 2020 be a year of political transformation.