“How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?”
–Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Another day, another GOP defector from Camp Trump
This time, Silverado S&L heiress, Lauren Bush Lauren – granddaughter of Daddy Bush, niece of Low Energy JEB! and daughter of Neil – has come out and endorsed HRC.
The split in the Bush family is more of a side show. The bigger issue: should Paul Ryan be removed and replaced as speaker of the House given his act of high treason in turning on Trump.
Finally, John McCain has announced that instead of voting for Trump, he will write in the name of his old friend, Lindsey "Blanche DuBois" Graham for President.
"Silverado S&L heiress"
Ooh, I like that.
The following is from a Republican friend of mine:
Perhaps, if George Will is correct, your friend's formula for redeeming the GOP and restoring the true meaning of bipartisanship (win/win, not "sucker!") could some day come about (but not likely during Hillary’s administration — the irrational personal hatred will always run deep in GOP circles).
Thanks for posting this, Michael.
Many here know I consistently point out the hypocrisy of Frank Luntz. Now a "pollster", running away from his complicity in creating the monster that is the Trump candidacy.
Republicans, you should send Mr. Luntz an appropriate greeting card to note his role in destroying your political party.
The greeting card should also include Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace who were responsible for putting Sarah Palin on the McCain ticket. President Obama has commented on the direct link between Palin and Trump. Today, as MSNBC commentators, Schmidt and Wallace are very eloquent Trump bashers and I appreciate their comments. Yet, I can't help but think they are petrified of a Trump victory and, if that happens, how historians will survey the US ashes and pin the blame on them.
Schmidt has admitted kicking himself repeatedly for the staying silent as long as he did about the fiasco that was The Dim Bulb from Alaska.
And didn't Wallace confess to not voting for McCain after she was tasked with educating Caribou Barbie and discovered it was futile.
All true about Schmidt and Wallace, but that doesn't absolve them of the effects of their "mistake".
She did in the movie. There, the character said she undervoted the top line.
Luntz is an Evil Mother Fucker and I hope he burns in hell…….starting yesterday. And this thing of, "well, he's such a nice guy", doesn't work for me.
You can read how Ann Coulter is very polite and civil and friendly when meeting people, backstage, in the green room. But what has her rhetoric done to our country?
Can you fault Luntz for being right about a strategy that actually works?
It is unethical, but it is for all intents and purposes legal and works time and time again.
But for this tactic, the GOP would almost certainly not have a majority in both houses of Congress, more than two-thirds of state legislative chambers, and 62% of Governorships in the United States.
It's also the strategy that made the party what it is today which is turning out not to be such a great thing for its future.
The gloves are off. Drumpf™ is a dyspeptic troglodyte this morning.
0730 on Tuesday
"Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, had a bad conference call where his members went wild at his disloyalty."
0800
"It is so nice that the shackles have been taken off me and I can now fight for America the way I want to."
0815
"With the exception of cheating Bernie out of the nom the Dems have always proven to be far more loyal to each other than the Republicans!"
0850
“Disloyal R’s are far more difficult than Crooked Hillary. They come at you from all sides. They don’t know how to win – I will teach them!”
1100
“The very foul mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks!”
Impeach Ryan!
So, the evangelical publication Christianity Today has denounced Trump as blatantly immoral and a fool. Doubt that will sink in for the likes of Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr., the last who has compared Trump to Winston Churchill.
There is also an "open letter" to Trump. Originally signed by about 100 Evangelical leaders, it was placed on Change.org. It now has over 19,000 signatures.
It won't, C.H.B. I read the piece reprinted in the Washington Post. He was talking to the readers. The "leaders" are impervious to both logic and an appeal to their faith.
Naming Trump what he is, a fascist, no longer breaks any rules because it's the simple truth.
The proof is there in his attacks on constitutional guarantees of civil rights for all Americans, attacks on the free press and independent polling operations, on the judiciary, his threat to persecute and jail his opponent (he even occasionally nods along with calls for her to be shot) and sue adversaries, is clls for revenge on his enemies, his wink/ wink tolerance of the racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic slurs spread by supporters including notorious hate groups, his penchant for pointing to vulnerable groups as the source of all of our problems, his vow to use religious tests and mass round ups without due process, to bring back torture and other practices illegal according to US and international law.
What is all this if not an exact description of a typical would be fascist strongman?
Then there is his alarming planting of the seeds for rejection of election results if he is defeated as he now knows he will be, his claims that such a result can only happen if everything is rigged against him, that the polls showing majorities against him are rigged, that the vote will be rigged.
Trump isn't just the worst candidate ever to be chosen by a major political party to run for the presidency. His potential election is an existential threat to the continued existence of the United States of America as created by our constitution and every single individual who votes for him is either an ignorant fool or a traitor.
I honestly don't think that's hyperbole. I do believe the ignorant fools outnumber the self serving traitors but that's no comfort. The comfort is that Trump and his supporters don't have the capability of launching an armed rebellion when he loses and he, like them, is an ignorant coward who wouldn't have the guts or capacity to lead one anyway. What he will want is a media empire to suck money out of his, yes, deplorable admirers until it too goes bankrupt like his previous ventures. It probably won't take long.
If, in the process, the ignorant, hate mongering extremist dominated 21st century iteration of the GOP is destroyed then the long national nightmare that is the Moral Majority morphed into the Tea Party morphed into Trumpism will have accomplished some good after all.
I agree with your analysis BC, but worry that even if the GOP successfully rids itself of the worst of the Trumpists from their ranks, it will be no different than the dispersal of the Iraqi Baathists who in defeat have taken their hatred and vengefulness to form the backbone of ISIS.
As bad as the KKK and John Birchers were, they would be nothing compared to a homegrown radical "Christian" terrorist underground taking their cues from ISIS.
I don't think the Trumpians have the brains or the guts. I foresee flare ups more akin to Bundy ineptitude.
The Baathists, ISIS, etc. are serious scary dudes used to living in an eat or be eaten world where being disappeared, tortured, executed, losing your family to internacine war are every day realities and they know dishing those evils out out means sometimes having to take them which is why they fight so hard to be the the dishers rather than the dishee. Being ruthlessly brutal is what he only way to survive.
Trumpians are just blowhard cowards. Just exactly like their "fearless" leader.
I hope you are right, and maybe incidents will be isolated and uncommon. But I see unbalanced, self-radicalized "warriors" using semiautomatic weapons, home-made explosives and any other weapons they can create or get their hands on to continue in the path of the SC church shooter, the CSprings Planned Parenthood clinic shooter, and the like, but with more organization and support. I'm not usually this pessimistic, but I see hatred of Hillary as an even stronger motivator than fear of a black guy in the White House has been for the last 8 years.
I agree potential incidents are a frightening prospect. I just don't see wholesale civil warfare, a full scale rebellion led by brave Trumpians (an oxymoron if ever there was one) in our future.
Didn't The Screaming Yam strut his Alpha-Maleness earlier this week by threatening De Niro via Twitter? A brave, brave man he is!
I agree BC, but fear the lessons that will be learned by future presidential candidates. Will they conclude that authoritarian, divisive, bigoted, hate speech is not the way to go? Or will they decide that Trump's fatal flaw was not his message or methods, but his packaging? If you can just do and say the same things, without the 3 am tweets, hot mike recordings of sexual assault, and the suspect tax history, you can be the next president of the US.
But, the more optimistic part of me thinks that Trump is completely unique. He is a reality tv star. So many people that are voting for him are voting because of what they saw (and were fed) on the Apprentice. They believe what they saw with their own eyes; the strong, decisive, omniscient leader. They don't believe what the "media" tells them, and, above all, they hate Hillary as much and more than they hate Obama.
But the line between political leaders and entertainers has been becoming more and more blurry for decades. Even Reagan was able to separate one of his careers from the other. This guy has completely erased any line. His is the reality TV candidacy.
The other thing is the dumbing down of elected officials. There was a line in an episode of the West Wing where Martin Sheehan tells James Brolin that he's made "disengagement into a zen thing."
I'm old fashioned and I want someone smarter than me to be president.
Amen. A lot of us could match IQs with any Prez so it's not just a matter of smarts but also being more experienced in the required skill set and having a broader base of knowledge through life long interest in things like national and international affairs, history, economics, etc.
If he's smarter than you, he should be your Chief of Staff, Frank .
Precisely, BC. Myparakeet's IQ is 8 points higher than Donald Trump's. And my parakeet is dead.
And your dead bird probably has better plumage than Trump.
…and a bigger pecker…