Three More Signs Republicans Are in Trouble

Close to two decades ago I decided the Republican Party was headed towards moral bankruptcy as Christofascists were foolishly voted onto positions on city and county committees with many existing members foolishly/cynically believing they could control the science denying, religious extremists, many of whom descended from segregationists.  Time proved that the unwashed cavalierly voted onto these committees were beyond control and they cancer they represented has now spread across the Party and, perhaps belatedly, a majority of Americans are seemingly waking up to the reality of the incompetent, morally challenged horror show the GOP has become. I have long said that the GOP cannot be reformed from within - the members of the Lincoln Project seem to have come to a similar conclusion - and that only electoral disaster will force change on the Party. While Donald Trump has no doubt helped showcase the ugliness of today's GOP, the hopefully looming electoral debacle facing the GOP will impact many others in the Party who prostituted themselves to Trump and tossed aside the needs and wishes of the majority of Americans as they have pandered to Trump, white supremacists and religious extremists.  A column in the Washington Post looks at signs the GOP may be about to reap what it has sown.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans are in deep trouble. It is not simply President Trump’s atrocious national and state polling numbers. It is not merely the growing list of incumbent Senate Republicans facing difficult elections. (Five incumbents are in toss-up seats, according to the Cook Political Report; four are in the next-worst category of “Lean Republican.”) There are three new signs suggesting the Republicans’ grip on power is draining like sand out of an hourglass.

First, for all of Trump’s support among Republicans (not 94 percent as he claims, but generally in the high 80s), there is stunning evidence of what we suspected was underway in 2018. It is not so much that Republicans are abandoning Trump but that voters are abandoning the Republican Party, and now adding to the anti-Trump vote. Gallup reports:

Since January, Americans’ party preferences have shifted dramatically in the Democratic Party’s direction. What had been a two-percentage-point Republican advantage in U.S. party identification and leaning has become an 11-point Democratic advantage, . . . In June alone, there was a three-point increase in Democratic identification and leaning, and a corresponding five-point drop in Republican identification and leaning.

The flight from the GOP just in June, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, suggests millions of Americans may have decided it was unacceptable to identify as Republicans. The implications are ominous for Republicans up and down the ticket. Per Gallup: “Four months before Election Day, Democrats appear to be as strong politically now as they were in 2018 when they reclaimed the majority in the House of Representatives and gained seven governorships they previously did not hold,” . . . . “If the strong current Democratic positioning holds through Election Day, Democrats could build off those 2018 successes to possibly win the presidency and Senate in 2020.”

Second, without directly challenging Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is abandoning Trump’s stances emphatically and quickly. Over the past few weeks, he has become a poster-boy for mask-wearing, bemoaning those who have politicized the issue. He is also caving on the next stimulus bill. . . . She [Nancy Pelosi] also noted that McConnell knows how to read the polls and that he listens to his members. The momentum is with Democrats, and he better hop on board — quickly.

Third, Republicans are panicking over money, as well they should. The Wall Street Journal reports: “Democratic candidates in the 11 most competitive Senate races collectively raised $67.3 million in the second quarter of the year, $20.5 million more than their Republican counterparts, according to fundraising reports filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. The total includes two Republicans who gave almost $6.5 million to their own campaigns.” At least one Republican operative is living in the real world, telling the Journal, “We’re scared to death by what we see.”

The House picture is no brighter. ABC News reports, “House Democrats are outpacing their own previous fundraising records, bringing in nearly $40 million in the second quarter — a signal of both the party’s enthusiasm in the final stretch of the cycle ahead of November and the difficult road ahead for the GOP seeking to take back the majority.” What’s more, reliable third-party groups that normally give big money to Republicans have not been opening their wallets.

Former vice president Joe Biden (never known as a prodigious fundraiser) has been raking it in. The New York Times reports: “Mr. Biden’s campaign announced on Thursday that he entered July with $242 million in the bank, up from less than $60 million at the beginning of April. He still has less money than Mr. Trump, who reported $295 million, but the cash gap is suddenly far less daunting.”

To recap: The GOP is shrinking, Republicans are scrambling to get on the right side of stimulus, and the fundraising numbers indicate donors are figuring out the party will lose big. At some point, all of this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — and a big blue wave.

Let's hope the trend continues and that the GOP suffers horrific electoral losses in November.  It's the only way there will be a chance for a remaking of the Party that will include jettisoning white supremacists and evangelical extremists.

America Is In a Downward Spiral. Worse is Still to Come

Like many so-called conservatives and Republicans, George Will - one of the deans of reasoned conservative thought - was an apologist for disastrous GOP policies and Republican shenanigans which harmed the country and laid the groundwork for the rise of Donald Trump.  Unlike those in the GOP who continue to prostitute themselves both to Trump and the white supremacist/religious extremists of the GOP base, Will finally opened his eyes and belatedly has come out strong in condemning the moral bankruptcy of Trump and today's Republican Party. In a column in the Washington Post he admits that America is in decline and lays much of the blame at the feet of Trump and the Republican political whores who have enabled him.   Further, he longs for a massive landslide victory by Joe Biden that will be so stark that even Trump's lies and his mindless, soulless followers will not be able to challenge the repudiation of Trump and all he and the GOP which is now a reflection of him stand for.  Here are column highlights:

Never has a U.S. election come at such a moment of national mortification. In April 1970, President Richard M. Nixon told a national television audience that futility in Vietnam would make the United States appear to the world as “a pitiful, helpless giant.” Half a century later, America, for the first time in its history, is pitied.

Not even during the Civil War, when the country was blood-soaked by a conflict involving enormous issues, was it viewed with disdainful condescension as it now is, and not without reason: Last Sunday, Germany (population 80.2 million) had 159 new cases of covid-19; Florida (population 21.5 million) had 15,300.

Under the most frivolous person ever to hold any great nation’s highest office, this nation is in a downward spiral. This spiral has not reached its nadir, but at least it has reached a point where worse is helpful, and worse can be confidently expected.

The nation’s floundering government is now administered by a gangster regime. It is helpful to have this made obvious as voters contemplate renewing the regime’s lease on the executive branch. Roger Stone adopted the argot of B-grade mobster movies when he said he would not “roll on” Donald Trump. By commuting Stone’s sentence, Stone’s beneficiary played his part in this down-market drama, showing gratitude for Stone’s version of omertà (the Mafia code of silence), which involved lots of speaking but much lying. Because the pandemic prevents both presidential candidates from bouncing around the continent like popcorn in a skillet, the electorate can concentrate on other things, including Trump’s selection of friends such as Stone and Paul Manafort, dregs from the bottom of the Republican barrel.

Today, there is a vast longing for respite from the 21st century, which — before the pandemic, two inconclusive wars and the Great Recession — began with a presidential election that turned on 537 Florida votes and was not decided until a Dec. 12, 2000, Supreme Court decision. Given Trump’s reckless lying and the supine nature of most Republican officeholders, it is imperative that the Nov. 3 result be obvious that evening.

[T]he pandemic will be an accelerant of preexisting trends: There will be a surge of early and mail voting. So, an unambiguous decision by midnight Eastern time Nov. 3 will require (in addition to state requirements that mailed ballots be postmarked, say, no later than Oct. 31) a popular-vote tsunami so large against [Trump] the president that there will be a continentwide guffaw when he makes charges, as surely he will, akin to those he made in 2016.

It is scandalous that in many places casting a ballot requires hours of standing in line. Larry Diamond of the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution at Stanford discerns another scandal: “The hard truth is that there has been a rising tide of voter suppression in recent U.S. elections. These actions — such as overeager purging of electoral registers and reducing early voting — have the appearance of enforcing abstract principles of electoral integrity but the clear effect (and apparent intent) of disproportionately disenfranchising racial minorities.

This nation built the Empire State Building, groundbreaking to official opening, in 410 days during the Depression, and the Pentagon in 16 months during wartime. Today’s less serious nation is unable to competently combat a pandemic, or even reliably conduct elections. This is what national decline looks like.

I hate to say it, but Will is 100% on the money.

The Republicans Who Want to Destroy Trump

As a former Republican I still find it shocking how debased and horrible the Republican Party has become.  As noted be for, in my view, the party's decline correlates with the rise of Christofascists within the GOP. Not coincidentally, the rise of the Christofascists also correlates with the rise of open racism withing the GOP. These factors are what paved the way for the rise of Donald Trump.  Cruel, racist, dishonest people embraced a cruel, racist, morally bankrupt candidate.  Some in the GOP left early on as I did as soon as I realized where the Christofascists and racists were steering the party.  Other moderate and sane Republicans mistakenly believed that they could fight a rear guard action to save the soul of the GOP.  Now, these former Republicans are working to defeat Trump - a man who embodies everything wrong with the GOP today.  Whether they succeed or not, their efforts are proving welcomed by both Democrats and former Republicans who fled the GOP as a matter of conscience and morality.  A New York Times column looks at these efforts which may not save the GOP but with luck will lead to a horrific defeat for Trump and his GOP enablers in November.  Here are column excerpts:

Should you have any doubt about how passionately George Conway and the other Never Trumpers at the Lincoln Project want to defeat the president, check out their ads.

There are dozens at this point, and the best are minute-long masterpieces of derision, miniature operas of contempt, designed to get into President Trump’s head and deep under his skin. That’s exactly where they’ve burrowed.

They don’t hope to regain control of the Republican Party, because they expect that Trump-ism will survive Trump and that Trump himself won’t shut up simply because voters shut him down.

“I personally think that the Republican brand is probably destroyed,” Conway told me. “It’s destroyed by it having become essentially a personality cult.” He said that he formally left the party, changing his voter registration to unaffiliated, some two years ago, and he doesn’t envision being able to return anytime soon.

But the Lincoln Project’s full-court press for Joe Biden, which involves social media and grass-roots organizing as well as internet and television ads, doesn’t mean that Conway and company are looking for a welcome mat in the Democratic Party. Not at all.

They’re not fighting to come in from the wilderness. The wilderness is a given. They’re just fighting to get rid of this one sun-hogging, diseased redwood — or orangewood, as the case may be.

It’s easy to miss or minimize how remarkable the Never Trumpers — at the Lincoln Project and elsewhere — are. That’s partly because they’ve been around almost since Trump’s presidential campaign commenced, so they’ve lost their novelty and some of their luster.

But they’ve gained in ranks and grown in determination, to a point where you have to go back to 1972 — when many prominent Democrats endorsed President Richard Nixon, a Republican, over George McGovern, the Democratic nominee — to find anything close.

And even that precedent doesn’t quite hold up. As the historian Timothy Naftali told me, the Democrats for Nixon split with him primarily along ideological lines, and they weren’t trying to undermine an incumbent president. Never Trumpers are doing precisely that, and while they have ideological quibbles with Trump, they’re motivated principally by their belief that he’s something of a monster.

“It’s an unprecedented moment,” said Charlie Sykes, a founder and editor-at-large of The Bulwark, a Trump-bashing publication begun in 2018 by Trump-disgusted Republicans like him. Sykes no longer considers himself a Republican. He described himself to me as “a politically homeless contrarian conservative.”

The Bulwark shares personnel and DNA with Republican Voters Against Trump and Republicans for the Rule of Law, all bastions of Never Trumpers. There’s also a new super PAC called 43 Alumni for Biden, a reference to George W. Bush, the 43rd president. It comprises scores of alumni of his administration who want to see Biden beat Trump, and it intends to release testimonials from former senior Bush administration officials.

As for the Lincoln Project, it’s helmed not by a ragtag band of renegades but by a cluster of strategists who worked for Bush, John McCain or Mitt Romney and were well-connected Republican insiders until Trump’s takeover. The anti-Trump rebellion is distinguished by the pedigree of the rebels.

[S]ome political observers see what the Lincoln Project and its kin are doing as an exercise in protracted political suicide. Even if Trump and his minions get a resounding comeuppance in November, “It seems unlikely that Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh will apologize to the Cassandras and say, ‘You were right all along!’” Matt Lewis, a conservative, wrote recently in a column in the Daily Beast under the headline “The Never Trumpers May Destroy Him. Then What?”

Sykes at The Bulwark conceded: “It’s naïve to think that the Republican Party is going to snap back to sanity anytime soon. The fact that people are talking about Tucker Carlson in 2024 shows you how far they’ve gone.”

There’s an especially rapt audience for takedowns of Trump from conservatives, and Never Trumpers have found themselves in high demand as commentators and book authors.

[W]hen I look at them, I see patriotism, though John Weaver — who, along with Conway, helped to found the Lincoln Project — emphasized a different idea when we spoke. He stressed atonement.

Trump’s election made him revisit how he and other Republican strategists had paved the way for Trump. For instance, Weaver worked for the man who was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump for president.

Sykes spoke of “a revelation” that he has experienced, courtesy of Trump. “The heart of politics is not about the policy,” he told me. “It’s about the values. I can disagree with you on eight out of 10 issues, but if you’re an honorable, honest, empathetic human being, we can do business.” Trump is none of those things. Biden is most or all of them — and will get Sykes’s vote in November.

In exile he and other Never Trumpers have found clarity. They cut to the heart of the matter. That’s reflected in a Lincoln Project ad from late May that begins with a close-up of body bags and then pulls back until those bags form an American flag. These words appear over it: “100,000 Dead Americans. One Wrong President.”

I don’t know that they’ll tip the election. But they sure as hell tell it like it is.

Vichy Republicans Fear the Consequences of Self-Prostitution to Trump

The Republican Party I grew up in and once supported is dead and gone.  In its place is a party that rejects science and education, embraces white supremacy and has completely prostituted itself to Donald Trump and the ugliest elements of his base of support, namely openly racist whites and white evangelicals (although at times it is difficult to differentiate the latter the former).  Now with Trump's support seemingly eroding and a majority of Americans tiring of Trump's non-stop racism,  congressional Republicans, especially those in the Senate fear that they may be in for a much deserved reckoning come November.  As a former Republican I have zero sympathy for today's Republicans who now disingenuously seek to pretend they find Trump's white nationalism distastefully.  They are little better than the Vichy French who collaborated with the Nazi's in occupied France. Like the Vichy French, these Republicans sold their souls for short term power and need to pay a high price.  A long piece in the Washington Post looks at this self-made crisis for Republicans.  Here are highlights:

President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore, has unnerved Republicans who have long enabled him but now fear losing power and forever associating their party with his racial animus.

Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trump’s public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced this summer as [Trump] the president has reacted to the national reckoning over systemic discrimination by seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.

Trump has left little doubt through his utterances the past few weeks that he sees himself not only as the Republican standard-bearer but as leader of a modern grievance movement animated by civic strife and marked by calls for “white power,” . . . . Trump put his strategy to resuscitate his troubled reelection campaign by galvanizing white supporters on display Friday night under the chiseled granite gaze of four past presidents memorialized in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He celebrated Independence Day with a dystopian speech in which he excoriated racial justice protesters as “evil” representatives of a “new far-left fascism” whose ultimate goal is “the end of America.”

Over the years, some Republicans have struggled to navigate Trump’s race baiting and, at times, outright racism, while others have rallied behind him. Bursts of indignation and frustration come and go but have never resulted in a complete GOP break with the president. Trump’s recent moves are again putting Republican officeholders onto risky political terrain.

On Friday night at Mount Rushmore, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), a member of the party’s leadership, and other top Republicans were seen applauding as Trump spoke.

Trump’s repeated championing of monuments, memorials and military bases honoring Confederate leaders has run up against the tide of modernity and a weary electorate that polls show overwhelmingly support the Black Lives Matter movement — a slogan that Trump said would be “a symbol of hate” if painted on Fifth Avenue in New York.

On Capitol Hill, some Republicans fret — mostly privately, to avoid his [Trump's] wrath — that Trump’s fixation on racial and other cultural issues leaves their party running against the currents of change. Coupled with the coronavirus pandemic and related economic crisis, these Republicans fear he is not only seriously impairing his reelection chances but also jeopardizing the GOP Senate majority and its strength in the House. . . .  “The problem is this is no longer just Trump’s Twitter feed. It’s expanded to the podium, and that makes it more and more difficult for these campaigns.”

Racial animus and toxicity were woven throughout Trump’s 2016 campaign. Patrick Gaspard, a former Obama White House political director who is now president of the Open Society Foundations, credited Trump with understanding “that there is a constituency — a deep constituency, a solid constituency, a resolute constituency — in the electorate for these views.”

The difference now, four years later, Gaspard argued, is that the sentiments of many Americans about justice and disparity appear to have evolved.

Former Ohio governor John Kasich, a Republican who ran against Trump in 2016, said the GOP’s muted and scattered response to the president on race this week underscores how the party is “in decline” and has become a vessel for Trumpism — even as polls show Trump losing ground among seniors and white evangelicals and trailing Biden in every key battleground state. 

“They coddled this guy the whole time and now it’s like some rats are jumping off of the sinking ship. It’s just a little late,” Kasich said. “It’s left this nation with a crescendo of hate not only between politicians but between citizens. . . . It started with Charlottesville and people remained silent then, and we find ourselves in this position now.”

Kasich added, “I’m glad to see some of these Republicans moving the other way but it reminds me of Vichy France where they said, ‘Well, I never had anything to do with that,’ ” a reference to the French government that continued during Nazi occupation in the 1940s. 

“Trump is pretty predictable with his racism and his racialized take on things,” Wright Rigueur said. “Every once in a while the Trump administration and campaign have flashes of what look like sincere outreach efforts to various racial communities. . . . But that’s the part that’s insincere, and he always circles back to his core, and it renders all of this other stuff around the economy and criminal justice reform completely invalid because there’s no way of ignoring the central component of his campaign.”

Dianne Pinderhughes, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who focuses on race and politics, said Trump’s latest outbursts are the culmination of his nearly decade-long effort to remake the GOP in his own image, going back to his racist “birther” attacks on Obama’s credentials and love of country.

Trump’s racism, she said, “is not subtle at all. Every step he takes, every comment about human beings, murders or killings, he can’t hold back. Even as Mississippi and other parts of the country remove Confederate symbols, he goes in the opposite direction as hard as he can.”

Some senators and their advisers believe they must expand their vote share beyond Trump’s base to win reelection.

“[Trump's] The president’s base is locked in. They love him, they’re going to turn out and they’re going to vote for him,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres said. “The problem is that the base is not enough to win. You can make a case that protecting Confederate monuments is very popular among at least a portion of his base, but it does nothing to expand the coalition, and that’s the imperative at the moment and will be going forward if the party hopes to govern.”

Trump has not made it easy for embattled Republicans to duck him. He reaffirmed Tuesday that he would veto this year’s proposed $740 billion annual defense bill if an amendment is included that would require the Pentagon to change the names of bases named for Confederate military leaders — an amendment that has bipartisan support. 

Trump’s approach has deep roots in Republican politics. Beginning with the violent opposition among some white voters to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Richard Nixon and other Republican politicians appealed to white voters — especially in the South — with calls for “law and order” and vows to defend states’ rights as the federal government enforced the new laws.

Most congressional Republicans in challenging races this year have long been mute on Trump’s racist comments, or they have cast them as unhelpful or combative but not racist — a method that has largely helped them avoid Trump’s anger.

Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who has done extensive research on racial divisions, argued that Trump is likely to continue to play to “white resentment politics” because it is the only strategy that could stave off further erosion of his support.

“Without white resentment, there is no rationale for Donald Trump,” Belcher said. “Without that, what reason do his supporters have to be with Donald Trump if he’s not going to be your tribal strong man? He started there and will end there.”

The Case for the Repudiation of Donald Trump in November

Former Republican Michael Gerson - who held positions in the Bush administration - makes the case in the Washington Post of why Donald Trump needs to be defeated in November, hopefully in a sting landslide that will trash his ego.  As I continue to state, the choice in November ultimately comes down to one of voting morality and decency or voting for immorality and hatred.  It's that simple and no desire for lower taxes - something I support, especially after having to write a fife figure check for additional taxes - does not justify voting for a man who is the embodiment of the seven deadly sins. Sadly, most evangelicals have shown they are on the side of immorality despite all of their false piety and self-congratulation.  As Gerson lays out, the Trump/Pence regime has proven to be perhaps the most incompetent and ugly in the nation's history and deserves a resounding defeat that might - I'm not holding my breath given the grip the white supremacists and Christofascists have on the party's base - result in some moral regeneration within the GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

The stage is being set for the repudiation of President Trump in November.

This is not merely because he has faced dual crises — the pandemic and the protests — that would have tested any president. It is because his reactions to those crises have been among the worst performances by any president. Trump’s eventual rejection by the electorate (if it comes) will be due to his own conscious choices in the face of challenge.

Without the pandemic and protests, Trump had a serious chance of reelection, which is a disturbing commentary on American politics. But this is now like saying that Herbert Hoover would have been a spiffing president without the Great Depression. Trump has been similarly and permanently marked by failure.

What other president would have played down the advance of a global health crisis to keep stock prices inflated? . . . . This delay in facing reality was an error on the scale of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act signed by Hoover, which set off a global round of protectionism that expanded and deepened the depression.

What other president would have fed populist resistance to public health measures as the coronavirus pandemic continued to spread? It was in mid-April that Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!,” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd amendment. It is under siege!” Trump actively undermined advice on lockdowns from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health in favor of the fringe views of a small number of armed protesters. And he chose — amazingly, alarmingly — to equate essential health measures with gun confiscation. I can think of no presidential precedent. It is unique in its recklessness.

When it came to the protests, Trump both cowered and raged. What other president would have employed a quote used by segregationists — “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” — in dealing with a national revolt against deadly discrimination? What other president would have turned tear gas and stun grenades against lawful protesters in order to strut across a park and hold up a Bible for the cameras? Not even Richard Nixon made such a public display of his viciousness and crassness.

Trump’s failure to rally the “silent majority” against social disorder is a hopeful commentary on American politics. Most Americans, silent or not, quickly realized that the overwhelming majority of protesters were enemies not of social order but of social injustice. When Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) eventually joined a Black Lives Matter march, Trump was left discredited and largely isolated in his racism.

This is not to say that a repudiation of Trump would quickly lead to a Republican rejection of Trumpism. The president’s use of economic distress, demographic transition and security threats to scapegoat migrants, Muslims and refugees found a deeper resonance among party regulars than I thought it would. Trump’s exploitation of rapid social change to fertilize evangelical Christians’ fears and harvest their support has been a signature success (though it has badly damaged the reputation of evangelicalism in the process).

A Trump defeat would at least begin a GOP debate on its ideological future. If Republicans lose control of the Senate, that debate will be more urgent. But most Republicans angling to be Trump’s political successor (see Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and even former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley) are embracing key elements of Trumpism — without, presumably, the erratic megalomania.

None of Trump’s flailing and dereliction guarantees reelection defeat. It is not possible to reliably predict presidential weather patterns five months in advance. But on the health of our country, and on the unity of our country, Trump has been a peerless failure. If he loses, it will be because he already belongs on the Mount Rushmore of presidential losers.

Well said.

The "Conservative" Campaign Against Science and Expertise

With the Republican Party base now controlled by Christofascists and overt racists, the GOP is engaged in a war against science, knowledge and expertise because all of this argue against the Christofascists' fairy tale world view and racists' desperate need to feel superior to others.    The Party has gone from one that valued education, knowledge and science to one where ignorance and bigotry is celebrated both among the party base and in the White House. This war on experts and expertise is placing the nation in danger, especially as Trump pushes to reopen the economy despite the dire warnings of health experts.  Trump's sole concern is reviving the economy and his own reelection chances.  How many might die doesn't factor into the equation.  A column in the Washington Post by a former Republican looks at this dangerous and disturbing phenomenon.  Here are highlights: 

It is perhaps inevitable that a problem as large and complex as covid-19 should result in a pandemic of motivated reasoning. It is a human tendency to interpret disasters as confirmation of our existing beliefs. So the coronavirus outbreak proves the need for a border wall. Or it demonstrates the urgency of Medicare-for-all. Or it resulted, in the words of Franklin Graham, from “a world that has turned its back on God.” 

The pandemic has given our health-care system an X-ray, revealing disturbing racial inequities that need to be understood and addressed. But on the whole, we are right to be wary of people who claim great tragedies as the confirmation of pet theories and previous prophesies. The convenience of an argument is often inversely proportional to its credibility.

Motivated reasoning is usually just tiresome. At its worst, it can be dangerous. Sometimes drawing the wrong lesson badly obscures a right and necessary lesson. Sometimes the interpretation of a crisis is so dramatically mistaken, so ludicrous and imprudent, that it can worsen the crisis itself.

Such is the case with conservatives who look at the coronavirus outbreak and see, of all things, the discrediting of experts and expertise. . . . . This argument assumes an intellectual fog that is just lifting. Though we are still relatively early in the pandemic, this much seems clear: The medical experts recommended aggressive social distancing to bend the curve of infections and deaths downward. Americans generally trusted the experts. By all the evidence, aggressive social distancing is bending the curve of infections and deaths downward. And places that were earliest and most aggressive in this approach have seen the best results.

This outcome doesn’t strike me as murky. It is difficult to see how experts whose advice clearly saved tens of thousands of lives can be called discredited. It is easy, however, to see how making this false claim might undermine public adherence to their advice, which still matters greatly in the crisis.

The limits of epidemiologists do not change the realities of epidemiology. The methods of science are the only way we gain access to information about the nature of disease. Judgments based on that information are not infallible. But they are always preferable to the aggregate opinion of the Internet. Even if that opinion stumbles on the truth, there is no way to be confident it is the truth.

The main failures we have seen in the coronavirus response have not been caused by excessive confidence in experts. Our problems have been rooted in the failure of political leaders to treat the warnings of experts with sufficient seriousness, and to act on those warnings with sufficient urgency. It was [Trump] the president who publicly dismissed the disease as a minor annoyance when other members of his administration knew that to be untrue. It was [Trump] the president who characterized pandemic awareness as a political conspiracy during wasted weeks. It was [Trump] the president who spouted misinformation about the disease and its treatment while horrified experts stood beside him.

From the beginning, flattening the curve was going to require heroic measures to achieve mixed results. That is the nature of reality, not a commentary on public health expertise. The experts have earned our trust. And continued progress depends on believing them.

The Abdication of Senate Republicans

McConnell - lead betrayer of the Constitution.

I've mentioned a book "Mortal Republic" which looks at the end of the Roman Republic and the rise of imperial rule in Rome.  A major player in the demise of the Roman Republic was the Roman Senate which ultimately abdicated it authority and gave way to Octavian - later Augustus - the first Roman emperor.  The Senator's motives 2000 years ago parallel what we are witnessing as the Republicans in the United States Senate throw away any allegiance to their oaths of office and telegraph to Donald Trump (and by way of precedent, future presidents) that government will be by presidential fiat and that there are no restraints on presidential power.  Avoiding a primary and re-election - and self-enrichment for those like Mitch McConnell - is all that matters in the short term, with there being no long term agenda.  Given Trump's extreme narcissism and desire to be an American equivalent to Vladimir Putin, this abdication of authority should be terrifying to every American of good will who believes in democracy.  Senate Republicans have made it clear that to them, the rule of law, facts, and morality mean absolutely nothing. All that matters is avoiding Trump's wrath and that of his increasingly ugly base of support in order to stay in power.  An editorial in the Washington Post looks at Senate Republicans betrayal of all their party once claimed to stand for.  Here are highlights: 

REPUBLICAN SENATORS who voted Friday to suppress known but unexamined evidence of President Trump’s wrongdoing at his Senate trial must have calculated that the wrath of a vindictive [Trump] president is more dangerous than the sensible judgment of the American people, who, polls showed, overwhelmingly favored the summoning of witnesses. That’s almost the only way to understand how the Republicans could have chosen to deny themselves and the public the firsthand account of former national security adviser John Bolton, and perhaps others, on how Mr. Trump sought to extort political favors from Ukraine.

The public explanations the senators offered were so weak and contradictory as to reveal themselves as pretexts.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)  . . . . Apparently she preferred a bad trial to a better one — but she did assure us that she felt “sad” that “the Congress has failed.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said the case against Mr. Trump had already been proved, so no further testimony was needed. But he also said, without explanation, that Mr. Trump’s “inappropriate” conduct did not merit removal from office; voters, he said, should render a verdict in the coming presidential election. How could he measure the seriousness of Mr. Trump’s wrongdoing without hearing Mr. Bolton’s firsthand testimony of the president’s motives and intentions, including about whether [Trump] the president is likely to seek additional improper foreign intervention in that same election?

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) echoed Mr. Alexander’s illogic, only he lacked the courage even to take a position on whether Mr. Trump had, as charged, tried to force Ukraine’s new president to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, or whether that was wrong. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) managed to be even more timorous, telling reporters that “Lamar speaks for lots and lots of us” and refusing to elaborate.

So cowed are most of those “lots and lots” of Republicans that few of them dared to go as far as Mr. Sasse. Some have echoed the president’s indefensible claims that there was nothing wrong with the pressure campaign. Their votes against witnesses have rendered the trial a farce and made conviction the only choice for senators who honor the Constitution.

Americans who object to Mr. Trump’s relentless stonewalling and Republicans’ complicity can take some comfort in the prospect that most or all of the evidence the White House is hiding will eventually come out. A reminder of that came Friday in a New York Times report about Mr. Bolton’s unpublished book, which describes how Mr. Trump ordered him last May to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to meet with his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Giuliani said publicly at the time he wanted to induce Mr. Zelensky to investigate Mr. Biden because it would be “helpful to my client,” Mr. Trump.

[T]here will surely be more reminders in the weeks and months ahead. We can hope only that voters who wanted that evidence to be heard in the trial will respond by showing incumbent senators they are a force to be reckoned with, as much as the bully in the White House.

When Will Republicans Realize Trump is Hurting Them?

For years now, the Republican Party has never focused on the future and the irreversible demographic changes coming to America.  Rather than broaden its appeal, it has concentrated its efforts on a shrinking, aging white demographic with undo reliance on Christian extremist voters even as the younger generations are leaving religion in droves.  Now, after Donald Trump won the presidency in what some see as a fluke, Republicans - mostly out of fear of their base - have made the conscious decision to tie themselves to Trump despite the losses the party has suffered since Trump's election and, arguably because of Trump's toxic policies and personality.  A piece in Newsweek looks at these Republican loses and the reckoning that may be awaiting Republicans in 2020 and beyond. Here are excerpts:

Like many things with Trump, his rhetoric bears no resemblance to the truth.

After losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, Trump won the Electoral College and, therefore, the White House in 2016 by 77,744 votes spread across three states. Put another way, Trump won the White House with fewer people than fit in many college football stadiums on Saturday afternoons.

And since that narrow victory, Republicans in the era of Trump have gone on to lose nearly every Election Day since. In 2017, Republicans lost the special election in deep-red Alabama, sending the first Democratic senator from the state in 25 years to Washington. Republicans lost the 2018 election, as Democrats had their biggest gain of seats in the House of Representatives since Watergate. And in 2019, Republicans lost again as Democrats flipped the governorship in Kentucky and won the governor's race in Louisiana—states Trump had won in 2016 by about 30 percent and 20 percent, respectively.

When you dig a little deeper, the numbers get much worse for Republicans. When Trump took office, Republicans controlled the House of Representatives 241-194; today, the Democratic majority is 232-197. When Trump took office, Republicans held the advantage in governors' seats 33-16; today, it is nearly even, at 26-24. And when Trump took office, Republicans had a 15 percent advantage in nationwide state legislative seats they held; today, that lead is down to only 5 percent.

I bet Republicans have a headache. But it is not from winning so much.

And all of that losing was before Trump was caught seeking foreign interference in our elections and the House impeached him.

This week, attention turns to the U.S. Senate and the impeachment trial that will start in earnest. Between the dizzying pace of bombshell revelations and the efforts of Trump and his allies in Congress and in conservative media to muddy the waters, the basic contours of this case easily get lost or blurred. But the facts are actually crystal clear: Trump used the powers of the presidency to solicit a foreign government to interfere in our election for his own political benefit. He then orchestrated a cover-up of his actions. And, finally, when he was caught, he obstructed the investigation.

Despite the mountain of evidence that proves the case, it is widely expected that a majority of Republicans in the Senate will join all their colleagues in the House in deciding not to hold Trump accountable for his abuses.

No matter what happens in the Senate, Trump will always be the third president in our nation's history to be impeached. But, by normalizing his abuses and his debasing of the office, Republicans are telling voters there is no action, including undermining free and fair elections in our country, that Trump could take for which they would hold him accountable.

While Republicans in Congress may fail to do their job, there are strong indications that voters will not fail to do theirs. And yet again, the Republican calculation that their loyalty to Trump will pay off in the next election will be exposed as deeply flawed, just as it has been in every election since 2016.

According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll, 70 percent of Americans think Trump's request to a foreign leader to investigate a political rival, the argument at the heart of the impeachment articles, was wrong. That is a remarkably high number. In today's highly polarized political environment, you probably can't get 70 percent of Americans to agree the sky is blue. Yet 70 percent agree that Trump's actions were wrong.

On top of that, support for impeachment and removal from office remains historically high. Fifty-two percent of Americans support removing Trump from office, according to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll. 

Lastly, enter into this equation that Trump is a historically unpopular president and is the first president in modern polling to never poll above 50 percent approval.

Add it all up, and you have a historically unpopular president who has headed up historic losses for his party entering into a historically popular impeachment trial.

That is not a winning equation for Republicans.

The battle for control of the Senate this year will be fought in Maine, North Carolina, Arizona and Colorado. Since Trump took office, his net approval ratings decreased substantially in each of those states, according to Morning Consult. His approval is down by 14 percent in Maine, 18 percent in North Carolina, 23 percent in Arizona, and 19 percent in Colorado. As we enter the election year, Trump remains underwater in each of those states. Donald Trump entered the White House with virtually no ability to help down-ballot Republicans, and three years and three Election Day losses later, he has even less today.

So, as senators will sit in judgment of Trump during this trial, voters will sit in judgment of them. Republicans in the House have had their say. Soon, Republicans in the Senate will have theirs. But ultimately, it will be voters who will have the final say come November.

If Republicans fail to hold Trump accountable, voters will hold them accountable.

Memo to Trump Toadies: Watergate Says Everyone Goes Down

History often repeats itself, especially for those who fail or refuse to learn from past events.  Many of us who remember the Watergate era see many parallels between that era and the present day where Donald Trump's lies and corruption make Nixon's sins pale in comparison.  Then and now, far too many Republicans chose to ignore facts and remained in lock step with their lying and corrupt party leader.  Ultimately, many of those who sold their souls in support of or co-conspiracy with Nixon paid a high price, many going to prison and many more seeing their political careers ended. This reality is lost on those currently prostituting themselves to Donald Trump - think Lindsey Graham and AG William Barr - and setting the longer term stage of seeing their reputations destroyed and their place in the view of history something other than what honorable people would want.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the message that such individuals ought to remember for Watergate. Here are excerpts:

As the campaign to impeach and remove President Trump has intensified, so have the defenses from his most devoted underlings. Naturally, these have included individuals closest to him—his adult children, his attorneys, and White House officials.

More die-hard demagogues have taken fortified positions on Capitol Hill. As the impeachment inquiry kicks into gear, they are doing whatever they can to downplay the charges and delegitimize the process. In hearings, they demand evidence or dismiss it; in interviews, they dodge the problems and gum up the process. Throughout, they hope that the volume of their voices might overwhelm the volumes of evidence. These Trump loyalists have now lashed themselves to the presidential mast. And if Watergate is an American parable, most of them will go down too.

Richard Nixon avoided prison time thanks to a pardon, but all the president’s men weren’t so lucky. Four dozen were convicted of criminal charges, and about half did time—including Nixon’s chief of staff, White House counsel, top advisers, and attorney general. Some of Trump’s inner circle, including his lawyer and his campaign manager, are already locked up. Odds are, they won’t be the last.

Nixon’s congressional toadies avoided courts of law, but they couldn’t escape the court of public opinion. Republicans fared so badly in the 1974 elections that prominent conservatives pronounced the GOP DOA. The party’s name was “poisoned with negatives,” said strategist Richard Viguerie. It’d be easier to sell “Typhoid Mary, the Edsel, or tickets on the Titanic.” William Rusher, publisher of National Review, wanted to scrap it all and start fresh with a “Conservative Party,” led by Ronald Reagan or George Wallace.

Reagan’s fealty didn’t harm his long-term prospects, but only because his prospects were long-term. He didn’t face voters in 1974. When he challenged Gerald Ford for the nomination in 1976, the man who’d given excuses for Nixon looked fine compared with the man who’d given him a pardon. By 1980, his water-carrying over Watergate was a non-issue.

[T]wo columnists—liberal Marquis Childs and conservative James J. Kilpatrick—published excerpts from letters sent by “Nixon loyalists,” charging that the “rotten, slanted, and biased” media “brain-washed” voters against their “brilliant” president. They warned impeachment was a “political coup d’état” that would spark “chaos.”

Initially, House Republicans—especially those on the judiciary committee—weren’t reluctant at all. Representative Edward Hutchinson, the ranking Republican, said Nixon shouldn’t be held accountable “for every little impeachable offense.” A millionaire from Michigan, Hutchinson complained in early 1974 that impeachment had been drummed up by “some eastern newspapers.” Despite the damning evidence, Hutchinson remained “unconvinced” by the “grab bag of allegations.”

Others agreed. . . . These Republicans formed a wall around Nixon, but cracks soon appeared. The committee had some liberal Republicans—a group not yet an oxymoron—but a staunch conservative, Maryland’s Lawrence Hogan, was the first from either party to announce his vote to impeach. In late July, the longtime Nixon loyalist announced that “my President has lied repeatedly” and said he had no choice.

When the time came to vote on five proposed articles of impeachment at the end of July, Hogan voted yes on three; six other Republicans voted for one or two articles. All had been warned that breaking with the party would end their political legacies, but the opposite happened. All the Republicans who approved articles of impeachment, except Hogan, stood for reelection. Five of them won. Indeed, they were repeatedly reelected . . . . Ten other Republicans voted against every article of impeachment. Most immediately regretted it. They had spent months demanding a “smoking gun” that proved the president’s role in Watergate. To their embarrassment, the recording showing just that became public only days after their vote. . . . Only one of the six was reelected that fall.

Republicans lost 48 seats in the House that fall, with many of the president’s most vocal defenders among them. Take Indiana representative Earl Landgrebe. “Don’t confuse me with the facts: I’ve got a closed mind,” he announced. “I’m going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot.” He wasn’t shot, but voters killed his political career with a humiliating loss that fall.

I remain dumbfounded by the willingness of so many to throw away honor and even basic morality to cling to someone as morally despicable as Trump.  One can only hope they face a very hard fall and are viewed by history as moral monsters.

Republicans’ Moral Rot is All Out in the Open

Smirking GOP Rep. Jm Jordan - who is also accused of
ignoring sexual abuse of student athletes. 

This week's impeachment inquiry hearings, especially the testimony of Trump appointee Gordon Sondland has not been good news for Der Trumpenführer, who has increasingly been revealed to operate no differently than crime boss.  But Trump is not the one to have been exposed as morally deficit. The revelations have involved Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney and others in the bribery scheme hatched to advance Trump's re-election campaign by slandering a potential political rival. Even further, based on their behavior to date, Congressional Republicans have been exposed to care more about power and tribal loyalty than they care about the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution and ethical behavior.  Michael Gerson, a former Republican like myself - I left the GOP far earlier having sense the growing moral rot - has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the moral degradation of the GOP that is now on open display.  One can only hope that the majority of the public is watching and will savage GOP candidates in 2020. Here are column highlights:

“Secretary [Rick] Perry, Ambassador [Kurt] Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States. . . . We followed the president’s orders. . . . Everyone was in the loop.”

With these words, Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, did his country the favor of candor and clarity. This does not mean that elected Republicans will yield to reason and evidence. But it does change conditions on the ground in significant ways.

First, President Trump can no longer employ his go-to method of damage control — throwing subordinates beneath the presidential limousine. Trump, according to Sondland’s testimony, personally directed the Ukraine squeeze. And if underlings are to be sacrificed, they would have to be underlings of the highest order. According to Sondland, Vice President Pence was informed of the extortion attempt and said nothing.

Both acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were closely involved in the effort. Trump would not hesitate to fire all three men if it would put him one point higher in the polls. But shedding your vice president, your chief of staff and your secretary of state is not a strategy of containment; it would be the complete collapse of the executive branch into recrimination and chaos.

The impeachment investigation has gained additional fuel by uncovering broad complicity at the highest levels of government. Some stories, such as the involvement of Attorney General William P. Barr, are yet to be fully told. . . . Is it really plausible that the most politicized attorney general of recent memory was an innocent bystander in these events?

Congress now has every reason and right to hear directly from Barr, Pence, Mulvaney and Pompeo, given their implication in public corruption. And their refusal to testify compounds their apparent corruption with cowardice.

Second, we have once again seen evidence of Trump’s mobster mentality. The president surrounds himself with a bodyguard of rotters — fixers who are willing to do his dirty work based on hints delivered with all the subtlety of a silent film actor. Any leader who would depend on Rudy Giuliani, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone for service and counsel is not a bad judge of character; he is a good judge of useful knaves. . . . But at the top of those lines Trump has placed people such as Mulvaney, Barr, Pence and Pompeo, who are morally neutered. In a perverse form of political Darwinism, leaders in the executive branch have been selected for traits of turpitude and tractability. It is the survival of the unscrupulous.

Third, the Sondland testimony — along with the testimony of other witnesses — has stripped away the last, semi-rational arguments advanced by Republican defenders of [Trump] the president. No quid pro quo? No longer tenable. Secondhand hearsay? Not anymore. A “deep-state” plot? Tell that to Vindman and Taylor. The president as anti-corruption crusader? Give me a break.

None of this is likely to change the minds of most elected Republicans on impeachment itself. It does, however, place their motivations out in the open. In the face of serious charges against [Trump] the president, Republicans have no exculpatory evidence to offer. Their true appeal — their only appeal — is tribal. . . . . Republicans would certainly support impeachment for a Democratic president who sought foreign help in rigging an American presidential election, particularly in a manner that strengthened an international rival. But no matter. . . . . The only thing that matters in the end? Using power to keep power.

Some, such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), are surrendering their integrity eagerly, almost happily. Other Republicans will want to appear more reluctant. But anyone who puts power above truth and character is doing a nasty disservice to their country. And it won’t be forgotten.

Vote Democrat in 2020.

The Vindication of Never Trumpers

Recently I saw a Facebook post that had a simple message: good people do not support bad people. I'd expand that a bit further and say that decent, moral people do not support immoral people.   By and large, the Republican Party ignored this simple test of morality that shows much more about one's true moral compass than feigning piety, sitting in church pews on Sundays, and hating gays - the hallmarks of today's evangelicals whose loyalty to Donald Trump is steadily killing the Christian brand among the millennial generations only 49% of which now view themselves as Christian. Even as the majority of Republicans - especially its white supremacist, evangelical base - demonstrated total moral bankruptcy by its embrace of Trump, there were some Republicans (most now are former Republicans) who said "no" and became labeled as never Trumpers, a group that Trump has called "human scum" suggesting that he must have been looking in the mirror when he uttered the statement. A column in the New York Times looks at these never Trumpers and the manner in which they have been vindicated even as their former colleagues have proven their lack of true morality.  Here are column highlights:

Even by Donald Trump’s standards, his tweet of Oct. 23 — the one that called NeverTrumpers “human scum” — plumbed new depths in the debasement of presidential speech.

But what else has changed? If Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic, were given the job of finding Trump’s moral bottom, he’d fail.

Far more revealing in Trump’s tweet was its first sentence. “The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats,” [Trump] the president wrote, before warning of their scummy natures.

If the few remaining NeverTrump conservatives can still be that dangerous while we’re on respirators, we must be powerful indeed. Somewhere in eternity’s permanent exile, Leon Trotsky is smiling. . . . As a movement, NeverTrumpism is on life support. And [Trump] the president has greater reasons than ever to fear it.

Three years ago, on the eve of the election, the NeverTrump coalition was a wide one, ranging from hard-core conservatives like Erick Erickson and Ted Cruz to somewhat squishier ones like Michael Gerson, John Podhoretz, and, well, me.

Then Trump won. The guy who was supposed to lead his party to a catastrophic defeat became the man who, in the eyes of the right, uniquely figured out how to save the country from Hillary Clinton. The coarseness of speech and crudeness of character that were supposed to be his central flaws became evidence of his gutsy indifference to liberal reproach.

There were also those conservative policy and political victories. Regulatory rollback. Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and all the lower court judges. Increased military spending. The tax cut. Withdrawal from the Iran deal. An expanded G.O.P. majority in the Senate.

The NeverTrumpers scattered. Some became ex-conservatives. Others, full-on Trumpers. Still others, anti-anti-Trumpers — which only meant they were smart enough to see [Trump] the president for what he is and churlish enough to be angry at those who wouldn’t join them in capitulating to it.

Yet the NeverTrumpers never scattered entirely, and thank heavens for that. Every political system will always have a conservative faction, and every healthy democracy needs that faction to be rooted in some combination of classical liberalism and moral traditionalism. Trump’s G.O.P., whatever its political fortunes, is the opposite: a nativist party led by a libertine.

At some level, conservatives know this. Trump knows they know it. Which explains why he has turned his sights on Never Trumpers: What despots and demagogues fear most is their followers developing a conscience.

No wonder [Trump] the president chose to lambaste Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman as a “Never Trumper.” The combat veteran had the simple decency of being scandalized by what he heard from the president on the Ukraine phone call, and by what he knew of the discrepancies between what he heard on the call and the account of it released by the White House.

The decency of being scandalized is what being NeverTrump is centrally about, and why the movement remains important. It’s the opposite of the opportunism required to go along with [Trump] the president because you might get something out of him.

It’s the same sense of scandal that led to the first significant G.O.P. revolt against Trump since John McCain turned his thumb down on Obamacare repeal in 2017: The suppurating disgust even pliant conservatives like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham feel at Trump’s cavalier betrayal of the Kurds.

And it helps explain why [Trump's] the president’s support with his base is slipping at last. A new poll finds Trump’s support among Republicans at 74 percent — an eight-point decline since September and the lowest since he was elected. Nearly one in five Republicans support impeachment and removal. So do 47 percent of independents. These numbers will not move in Trump’s favor if the truth about his “drug deals” (to borrow Bolton’s phrase) continues to come to light.

I doubt any of this will be sufficient to get at least 20 Republican senators to vote for Trump’s removal from office. But Trump knows that the number needed to spell his moral defeat on impeachment is four. If Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and one other Republican join the Democrats to convict, the political humiliation will be thunderous. And, as my colleague David Leonhardt has convinced me, it could devastate his re-election chances. If the administration thinks impeachment is such a political winner, they wouldn’t be fighting it this hard.

In the meantime, someone ought to print “Human Scum” on a limited-edition T-shirt. Given who said it about whom, it turns out to be a badge of honor. 

The real human scum are those who continue to support Trump either out of racism, homophobia and religious extremism, or simple greed and a focus solely on tax cuts. Any of those reasons for supporting Trump underscore a serious moral deficiency that feigned piety, condemnation of gays, avoidance of alcohol, and other evangelical forms of wearing religion on their sleeves will not wash away.   

The Humiliation of Lindsey Graham, a Trump Political Prostitute

Lindsey Graham - who willingly sold his soul.

One of the confounding things about Donald Trump sycophants and Republicans trying to outdo each other in give Trump political fellatio is that throughout his tawdry career, Trump has never shown true loyalty to anyone. It is all about Trump 24/7 and those who toss aside integrity and what little shred of honor today's Republicans can claim sooner or later find themselves tossed aside and disposable.  The same holds true in the international realm.  Trust Trump and any believe what he says and it's only a matter of time before the betrayal unfolds.  Ask the Syrian Kurds who allied with the United States only to find Trump summarily decide to withdraw American troops and aid and throw the Kurds to the mercy of Turkey.  Or ask Lindsey Graham who has prostituted himself to Trump more than almost any other congressional Republican in order to (i) remain "relevant" and (ii) stay in the good graces of the racists and Christian extremist in South Carolina that are keys to Trump's base.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at Graham's self-degradation seemingly for little return.  Here are excerpts:

It was a cri de cœur from Lindsey Graham, the lament of the sycophant scorned.

President Donald Trump’s decision to abandon our Kurdish allies in Syria by leaving them undefended against a Turkish invasion was, Graham tweeted, “a disaster” and a “nightmare.”

As Monday morning wore on, he expanded his indictment. Betraying the Kurds would force them to align with the Assad regime and Iran and would ensure the comeback of ISIS. It would be, he tweeted, “a stain on America’s honor,” and a virtual surrender to the terrorists. . . . “By abandoning the Kurds we have sent the most dangerous signal possible — America is an unreliable ally and it’s just a matter of time before China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea act out in dangerous ways.“ . . . In his cruelest cut of all, he compared Trump with Barack Obama.

Graham’s disappointment was palpable, but understandable, given all that he has given up to avoid this moment.

For the past several years, Graham has transformed himself from one of Trump’s fiercest critics, into one of his most reflexive defenders. Even by the cynical and shape-shifting standards of Washington, Graham’s metamorphosis has been a thing of wonder. The senator once known as John McCain’s best friend in the Senate, transformed himself into Trump’s shinebox, willing to ingratiate himself with rationalizations and praise even as Trump became increasingly erratic.

During the 2016 campaign, Graham had called Trump a “nutjob” and a loser,” as well as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” He predicted that if the GOP nominated him, “we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”

But as McCain faded from the scene, Graham seemed to shift his affections to the man who so publicly insulted McCain.

In moments of candor, Graham tried to explain the deal he thought he was making. When Mark Leibovich asked him earlier this year what had happened to him, Graham explained:

“Well, OK, from my point of view, if you know anything about me, it’d be odd not to do this,” he said.  I asked what “this” was. “ ‘This,’ ” Graham said, “is to try to be relevant.”

Like many others in his party, staying “relevant” was central to their political calculations. Capitulating to Trump meant that Graham would become a rock star in the increasingly Trumpist party and virtually assured of reelection in South Carolina next year.

He would also have the president’s ear. And this was at the heart of Graham's bargain.

Others made the same calculation, but Graham made the uber-tradeoff, because the stakes were so high. What did it matter if he had to endure temporary embarrassments, abase himself on cable television, or even become a political punchline, if he could stop Trump from impulsive decisions regarding Russia or North Korea? Or Syria?

The world saw Graham as a craven, cringing Uriah Heep. Graham saw himself as someone who could save the world, or at least the Kurds. . . . . He was not simply the adult in the room; he was the adult BFF in the room, who would temper Trump’s worst instincts.

And then came Trump’s decision.

Despite Graham’s compulsive turd-polishing of the past few years, Trump didn’t even consult him before making the decision to abandon the Kurds. Graham, who had given up so much self-respect to prevent just this outcome, was not even in the room. He didn’t even get a text.

This is the thing about Faustian bargains. The price is high and the rewards turn out to be illusory. They end badly.

This week, Lindsey Graham, found that out the hard way. I wonder what they’ll talk about the next time they go golfing together.