Thursday, August 27, 2015

Republicans Remain Largely Silent in Face of Trump’s Bigotry and Misogyny


With Donald Trump spouting some crazy, racist or misogynist virtually every day, one would think Republicans would be up in arms protesting the batshitery.  But they are not.  Instead they remain largely silent and the reason for this is simple: Trump is spouting the beliefs of the swamp fever sickened GOP base.  To attack Trump would be to attack the Christofascis/Tea Party base of the party and few Republicans dare face the wrath of these hate and fear driven extremists.  Meanwhile, the GOP continues to alienate more of the rest of the country.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

Wednesday was Women’s Equality Day, the anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave American women the right to vote 95 years ago.  And how have Republicans marked this egalitarian milestone? Why, with another bimbo eruption, of course.

The perpetrator, as usual, was Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, who, in his three-week-old feud with debate moderator Megyn Kelly, circulated a tweet late Monday once again referring to the Fox News star as a “bimbo.”

Fox News boss Roger Ailes, who had already had words with Trump over his sexist attacks on the anchor, fired back Tuesday with a statement saying Trump’s “surprise and unprovoked attack on Megyn Kelly during her show last night is as unacceptable as it is disturbing.” He went on to call Trump’s Twitter attack “crude and irresponsible.”

Trump’s response, at a press conference in Iowa: “It is a very small element in my life, Megyn Kelly. I don’t care about Megyn Kelly. No, I would not apologize. She should probably apologize to me, but I just don’t care.”  Right. The victim of Trump’s misogyny should apologize to him. 

[T]he character of the [other GOP presidential] candidates already has been revealed. Trump is acting like a sexist and a bigot — and the rest of the candidates are, with occasional exceptions, too timid to call him what he is.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus even praised the contribution made by Trump’s candidacy. “I think it’s a net positive for everybody,” he said in a radio interview.

A net positive? That’s an intriguing calculation, considering all the gross negatives:
Describing Mexican immigrants as rapists and thugs.
Kicking one of the nation’s leading Latino journalists, Jorge Ramos, out of a news conference, telling him, “Go back to Univision.”

[A]s the Trump outrages continue, they tend to be met more by eye-rolls and a Trump-will-be-Trump acceptance — and less by condemnation. After this week’s bimbo episode, a Washington Post search for responses by the candidates as of late Wednesday found only George Pataki (yes, he’s still in the race) weighing in, saying Trump was “over the line” and displaying a “demeaning attitude towards women.”

The way to combat Trump’s bigotry and misogyny is to denounce it as loudly as he spews it. 

No comments: