GOP Enablers as Trump Goes Full Fredo

Former conservative stalwart David Frum has a piece in The Atlantic which rightly goes after Der Trumpenführer's incompetence and unfitness for office.  However, just as importantly, he goes after Congressional Republicans who seemingly are willing to destroy the country - and put the entire world at risk - so that they can further that effort to return America to a new Gilded Age where the few have immense wealth and the rest of us have an existence like out of a Charles Dickens novel.  While Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan bear much responsibility, virtually every congressional Republican shares in the subversion of the best interests of a majority of Americans.  Here are highlights from Frum's piece:

“I can handle things. I’m smart! Not like everybody says, like dumb. I’m smart and I want respect!”  This morning’s presidential Twitter outburst recalls those words of Fredo Corleone’s in one of the most famous scenes from The Godfather series. Trump tweeted that his “two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” and in a subsequent tweet called himself a “very stable genius.”

Trump may imagine that he’s Michael Corleone, the tough and canny rightful heir—or even Sonny Corleone, the terrifyingly violent but at least powerful heir apparent—but after today he is Fredo forever.

There’s a key difference between film and reality, though: The Corleone family had the awareness and vigilance to exclude Fredo from power. The American political system did not do so well.

Who and what Donald Trump is has been known to everyone and anyone who cared to know for years and decades. Before he was president, he was the country’s leading racist conspiracy theorist. Before he was the country’s leading racist conspiracy theorist, he was a celebrity gameshow host. Before he was a celebrity gameshow host, he was the multi-bankrupt least trusted name in real estate. Before he was the multi-bankrupt least trusted name in real estate, he was the protege of Roy Cohn’s repeatedly accused of ties to organized crime. From the start, Donald Trump was a man of many secrets, but no mysteries. Inscribed indelibly on the public record were the reasons for responsible people to do everything in their power to bar him from the presidency.

Instead, since he announced his candidacy in mid-2015, Donald Trump has been enabled and protected.  The enabling and protecting not only continues. It accelerates.

Before the Saturday morning tweets, what should have been the biggest story of the week was Trump’s success at mobilizing the Senate and the FBI to deploy criminal prosecution as a weapon against Trump critics. The Senate Judiciary committee—the Senate Judiciary Committee! The committee that oversees the proper enforcement of the law!—formally filed a criminal referral with the Department of Justice against Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier about Trump’s Russia connections. The referral was signed by the committee’s chairman, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, without even notice to Democrats on the committee, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said; a startling abuse of majority status and a sharp departure from the norms of the Senate, especially a 51-49 Senate.

The Department of Justice can ignore such a referral. It’s ominous, however, that on the very same day, the FBI obeyed Trump’s repeated demands and reopened a long-closed criminal investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The FBI has come under relentless abuse from Trump, who complains about its refusal to do his will. Is it now yielding?

Michael Wolff has drawn the most indelible picture yet of Donald Trump, the man. But the important thing about Trump is not the man; it’s the system of power surrounding the man.

What sustains Trump now is the support of people who know what he is, but back him anyway. Republican political elites who know him for what he is, but who back him because they believe they can control and use him; conservative media elites who sense what he is, but who delight in the cultural wars he provokes; rank-and-file conservatives who care more about their grievances and hatreds than the governance of the country.

[W]ithout the complicity of other power-holders, Trump would drop from his central position like a tooth from a rotten gum. What we need to do now is widen the camera angle beyond Fredo Trump to the hard-faced men and women over his shoulders. Those are the people who put Trump where he is, and keep him there, corrupting the institutions of American democracy and troubling the peace and security of the world.

Trump's GOP Enablers Need to Be Held Accountable

As noted in several posts that have compared 2016 America with 1933 Germany, both Hitler and Trump have rose in power and respectability thanks to self-serving politicians who foolishly thought that they could control the demagogue that they believed would increase their own power and/or wealth.  The Germany enablers proved to be terribly wrong and Germany and the world paid a terrible price.  Here in America, there is still time to stop Trump and his racist and fascist agenda.  A column in the New York Times by a long time GOP apologist calls on Trump's enablers to take a stand and put the nation ahead of partisan ship and self-aggrandizement.  Would that this columnist and others would have condemned the GOP over the last 20 years for the hate, racism, homophobia and general misogyny that were used with great calculation to win elections.  Here are column excerpts:

Up through the convention there were all sorts of Republican officeholders who weren’t really for Trump, but they weren’t really against him. They sort of endorsed him implicitly, while trying to change the subject.

They had all sorts of squirrelly formulations about why it was O.K. to ride the Trump train: He can be tamed or surrounded and improved. Sure, he’s got some real weaknesses, but he’s more or less a normal candidate who is at least better than Hillary.

Over the past few days, Trump has destroyed this middle ground. He’s exposed the wet noodle Republicans as suckers, or worse. Trump has shown that he is not a normal candidate. He is a political rampage charging ever more wildly out of control. And no, he cannot be changed.

He cannot be contained because he is psychologically off the chain. With each passing week he displays the classic symptoms of medium-grade mania in more disturbing forms: inflated self-esteem, sleeplessness, impulsivity, aggression and a compulsion to offer advice on subjects he knows nothing about.

Trump insults Paul Ryan, undermines NATO and raises the specter of nuclear war. Advisers can’t control Trump’s brain because Trump can’t control it himself.

He also cannot be contained because he lacks the inner equipment that makes decent behavior possible. So many of our daily social interactions depend on a basic capacity for empathy. But Trump displays an absence of this quality.

Republicans are not going to be able to help the 70-year-old man-child grow up over the next few months. Nor are they going to be able to get him to withdraw from the race. A guy who can raise $82 million mostly in small donations has a passionate niche following.

But they can at least get out of the enabling business. First, they can acknowledge that they are being sucked down a nihilistic whirlpool. Second, they can acknowledge the long-term damage being done to the country and to themselves.

Amid the chaos, all sorts of ugliness is surfacing. See the video of the horrific things shouted at Trump rallies compiled by Times reporters. Moreover, Trump is permanently tainting the names of conservatism and the Republican Party and the many good men and women who have built and served it.

Events are going to force Republicans off the fence. For the past many months Republican leaders have been condemning Trump’s acts while sticking with Trump the man. Trump is making that position ridiculous and shameful. You either stand with a man whose very essence is an insult to basic decency, or you don’t.

Those who don’t will have to start building a Republican Party in Exile. They will have to tell the country what they honestly think of Donald Trump. They will have to build a parallel campaign structure that will survive if Trump implodes, a structure of congressional and local candidates.

There comes a time when neutrality and laying low become dishonorable. If you’re not in revolt, you’re in cahoots. When this period and your name are mentioned, decades hence, your grandkids will look away in shame.

Sadly, I am not holding my breath to see what Brooks calls for to happen.  The GOP sold its soul long ago to Christofascist, racists, and white supremacists.  

Trump Versus Hitler: Learning From Weimar Germany

I have read a great deal about Adolph Hitler's rise to power and the horrors he eventually inflicted on Europe's Jewish population, Germany itself, and much of the rest of the world.   In part my interest in that period is a horrified fascination perhaps with how an advanced, educated and civilized nation like Germany could succumb to Hitler and the Nazi Party.  The period and what happened ought to be a textbook for others throughout history of how regular humans can be turned into monsters if lead by the right manipulative demagogue who plays upon their fears and prejudices.  Nathan Stoltzfus, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University and the author of Hitler’s Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany, has a piece at the Daily Beast that compares the end of democratic Weimar Germany and America as it faces the rise of Donald Trump.  While the parallels are not 100% complete, there are similarities between Hitler and Trump and their racism, uncontrollable narcissism and demagoguery that thinking Americans should see clearly that Trump MUST be defeated in November.  Here are op-ed highlights:

While commentators have increasingly likened Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler as a convenient condemnation—others assure us that we (Americans) are better than that. So far there are, in fact, some instructive points of comparison, most significantly in the relationship between these men and their followers, as well as in the compromises that established political leaders are willing to make with these two men, under the assumption that they will be able to control them once they reach office.

Like those who helped Hitler to power, politicians and operatives have decided that they can harness Trump to their own purposes. Polls consistently show that two thirds or more of Americans have a negative impression of Trump. But he still could become our next president as Republican politicians and operatives help maneuver him into power.

In September 1930, as the Nazis surged in the polls to become Germany’s second largest party, German president Paul von Hindenburg was confronted with how to handle Hitler, founder and leader of the Nazis. General Hindenburg initially scorned Hitler as a “Bohemian Corporal,” in reference to his Austrian origins and lowly rank in World War I.
With the election of July 1932, the Nazis formed Germany’s most popular party, and conservatives convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor, amusing themselves with the belief that they would soon push him into a corner so hard he would squeak.

The United States is not now facing a “Weimar moment,” because the sense of crisis is not nearly as palpable and widespread as it was in Weimar Germany. Trump also does not seem driven like Hitler to slip history itself into a straightjacket cut to his own ideology, and his criminal cunning is less acute. Still, if helped into power by a combination of mass popularity and political operatives hoping to help themselves, Trump could do massive harm to democracy, considering his racist demagoguery, unbridled self-confidence, and authoritarian hostility toward a free press, to name just a few factors. 

Like Hitler, Trump likes to promote the image of a great leader that no one has to question. Many, eager to believe in an easy solution, appear eager to embrace it. Both encouraged a direct popular dependency on a man rather than a system or constitution. Both have encouraged unity at the expense of outsiders. Both have issued a license for the crowds to unite in feeling like they can set their emotions free from social constraints. . . . . At his stadium-size rallies, supporters unite in signaling to Trump’s bullyboys that someone in the crowd doesn’t belong. “Trust me, they are not good people,” Trump says as the outsider is carted off. His supporters also respond to Trump’s invectives against the press by unleashing their own pent up fury.

In the 1930s, such a symbiotic relationship between a growing number of Germans and their leader proved to be the bedrock foundation of Hitler’s power, a relationship of the masses to their great leader that served as the foundation of Germany’s crimes. Coming to power by promising to make Germany great again, Hitler convinced more and more Germans to yield to him as a spectacular Leader. Then he drew them further and further into collaboration with the crimes resulting from his racism, a process that continued to develop a sense of insider-belonging and a new sense of power for his followers.

There are strong forces in this country against Trump such as Hitler did not face. Yet history shows that the more people come together in the belief that they have found an urgently needed super-politician to bail them out, the harder it becomes to stop others from joining the bandwagon.

As Weimar warns, constitutional protections can crumble in the face of majorities amassed by a demagogue. Sure Trump is a racist, but the fundamental threat in his use of racism to incite the crowds, illustrated in his case attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel, is the possibility of gathering popular support sufficient to abrade the constitution and its balance of powers. Hitler had also aimed to remake law according to the will of his “racial” German people, once they followed him unquestioningly.

The more Trump wins, the more people once reluctant to support him will want to attach themselves to him—like the established Trump enablers who hope to use him. It is, however, unlikely that they will be able to exercise any more control over him, should Trump continue to whip up his crowds with the help of the presidential bully pulpit.