The RNC Sells its Soul to Trump

The moral corruption and retreat from sanity and decency of the Republican Party began years ago and ironically traces, in my view, to the rise of the "godly folks" in the party base.  The Christofascists, as I call them, who are neither sane nor decent people.  Hate, bigotry and a world view based on myths and - as one blogger friend puts it - belief in an imaginary invisible friend are now what drives the GOP and demagogues like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the natural result of the party's throwing aside of logic, reason, and belief in science in favor of racism and superstition.  Now, even the RNC seems ready to put the final nails in the coffin of the party by signalling that it will sell itself to Trump and Trumpism.   A column in the Washington Post looks at this final surrender.  Here are excerpts:

Late Thursday night, National Review, the storied conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, published an issue denouncing Donald Trump. . . . The Republican National Committee reacted swiftly — immediately revoking the permission it had given National Review to host a Republican presidential debate next month. 

That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump. Party elites — what’s left of the now-derided “establishment” — are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and of American conservatism. 

In recent days, influential Republicans including Bob Dole, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, Rupert Murdoch and, as my Post colleagues reported, Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) have made noises about being able to stomach Trump. Republican donors are trying to insinuate themselves in the billionaire’s orbit. 

The Wall Street Journal editorial page had long criticized Trump’s candidacy, publishing an editorial in July arguing that the conservative media who applaud Trump “are hurting the cause.” The editors opined: “If Donald Trump becomes the voice of conservatives, conservatism will implode along with him.”

A week ago, the Journal reversed course. “Mr. Trump is a better politician than we ever imagined, and he is becoming a better candidate,” the editorialists wrote, speculating that “he might possibly be able to appeal to a larger set of voters than he has so far.”

[H]ow do you un-ring all these bells? Trump has in word and deed built his candidacy by antagonizing Latinos and Muslims, immigrants and women, Jews and African Americans, Asian Americans and the disabled. And if he walked away from his vows to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and to block Muslims from coming into the United States, he’d abandon the source of his power: the rage of angry, less-educated white men.

[T]he only thing more likely to devastate the Republican Party and the conservative movement than a Trump wipeout in November would be a Trump victory. Either way, he’d cement the Republican Party’s long-term demographic problems and bind conservatism to bigotry and nativism.

 

This is why I wonder about the self-deception of those GOP elites now cozying up to Trump. . . . . If, in future years, Republicans and conservatives are called to explain how Trump happened, they might recall this: Good people could have stopped him, but they didn’t.

Once again we see the RNC looking for a current election cycle  victory with no thought to the long terms consequences.  This is how those who once would have been shunned and looked at as a form of contagion were welcomed into the GOP only to ultimately hijack the party. This is precisely how the GOP has come to be the party of insanity and hate.  The RNC and the so-called establishment have seemingly learned nothing.