I am an older guy, and I can't remember a time when the Republican Party didn't pride itself on being the "law and order" party. This continued until very recently. When us liberals were chastising police organizations for racial prejudice, they were quick to jump to their defense (even when it wasn't warranted). And their current leader, Donald Trump, praised police during his campaign -- and praised the nation's premier law enforcement agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
But they have changed, and that change came quickly. Once the FBI and the Special Prosecutor began to investigate the wrongdoing of Trump, suddenly they were no longer the "law and order" party. They were now victims of the FBI, and started to agree with Trump's scathing indictment of that organization. The FBI was just doing it's job, but evidently the Republican base thinks they should only investigate people they don't like -- not their favorite politician.
The chart above is from a new Axios / SurveyMonkey Poll. It shows that a plurality of the Republican Party now has an unfavorable opinion of the FBI (38% favorable and 47% unfavorable -- a negative gap of 9 points). It just shows that Republicans are now truly the party of Trump, and willing to denigrate anyone or any organizations that doesn't agree. The once proud party of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt has now devolved into the protector of corruption, collusion, and bigotry.
