The Lincoln Project: Trump’s Enablers Must Pay a Price

Max Boot, a former Republican himself, has a great piece on the Lincoln Project in the Washington Post.  He notes that the Lincoln Project founders - and I suspect many who have made donations to the project - still hold deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt while the bulk of the GOP has shown all it ever has cared about is power and that it will prostitute itself to any lengths in order to retain power. The Projects ultimate goal?  To destroy the Republican Party that is now the party of Trump, white supremacists and "Christian" extremists in the hope that a new center right party can emerge that actually values what most Republicans only pretend to care about. Hence the targeting of Republican senators who have sold their souls to Trump and sold out average Americans in the process.  Here are highlights that give deserved kudos to the Lincoln Project:

“The once-mocked ‘Never Trump’ movement becomes a sudden campaign force” — Post headline, July 11

If you want any more evidence of the validity of that conclusion, look no further than the frenzied attacks on the Lincoln Project, a political action committee formed last year by four Republicans (George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson) disenchanted with President Trump. With its razor-sharp videos, the Lincoln Project has drawn blood — and counterattacks mainly from the Trumpified right but also, surprisingly, from a section of the self-defeating left.

The most common charge is that, as Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel put it, the organization has a “record of grift” and “profiting off attacking President Trump.” This charge has been faithfully repeated with no evidence by the lap dog conservative press, e.g., the National Review and Ben Shapiro.

This is pretty rich coming from Trump’s acolytes, since there is no more glaring example of grift in our politics than the Trump campaign and the Trump White House. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Trump campaign and affiliated committees have spent $22 million at Trump properties since he entered politics in 2015.

Now that’s corruption. What the Lincoln Project is doing is simply politics as usual. There is no reason to believe, the Daily Beast writes, that “Lincoln Project executives are simply pocketing the money that’s channeled through their political consulting firms.” If those working on the Lincoln Project are compensated, well, they deserve it. They’re turning out brilliant videos at a relentless pace that puts most political organizations to shame.

The attacks on the Lincoln Project’s finances are a thinly disguised attack on its tactics — which are to attack Trump and the GOP from a perspective likely to appeal to middle-of-the-road voters. Right-wingers are especially perturbed that the group has targeted vulnerable Republican senators. . . . This would seem to refute a charge heard from the far left — namely that the group is a bunch of unrepentant warmongers who haven’t really broken with the GOP.

In fact, the Lincoln Project’s founders have impeccable Republican credentials, but they are thoroughly disenchanted with the Party of Trump. One of the consultants affiliated with the Lincoln Project — Stuart Stevens — has written a forthcoming book called “It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump” that explains in coruscating and compelling terms why he is done with a party he has served his whole life.

He calls the GOP “a white grievance party,” and writes that “there is an ugly history of code words and dog whistles in the party.” The rest of the Republican platform he dismisses as a convenient fiction: “How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy, and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held.… [I]t had always been about power. The rest? The principles? The values? It was all a lie.”

Stevens is particularly scathing about all the Republican politicians — many of them his clients — who have made common cause with Trump. “The most distinguishing characteristic of the current national Republican Party is cowardice,” he writes.

If you accept Stevens’s searing critique of the Republican Party — and I do — then it is incumbent on the Lincoln Project to target not just Trump but also his enablers. That’s just what it has done with commercials such as this one urging the defeat of Republican senators.

Does that mean the Lincoln Project favors a Democratic takeover of the Senate? Yup. But that doesn’t mean, as Trumpites blare, that it’s gone over to the far left. Its members have stayed on the center right while the Republican Party has been taken over, as Stevens writes, by “paranoids, kooks, know-nothings, and bigots.”

If we are ever again to have a sane and sober center-right party in America — something we desperately need — then the Trumpified GOP must first be demolished. That is what the Lincoln Project is trying to accomplish, and more power to it. By leading the charge against the Republican Party, its founders have shown greater fealty to conservative principles than 99 percent of elected Republicans.

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.

Anti-Trump Lincoln Project Catch Democrats’ Attention - and Donations

I left the Republican Party as a matter of conscience many years ago at this point, so I do understand that many one time Republicans have now reached that point, especially since the GOP embraced Donald Trump, the most immoral and unfit individual to ever occupy the White House. Thus, I applaud everyone who has abandoned the GOP when faced with the choice of morality and true patriotism versus immorality and the destruction of America's image in the world and ongoing harm to average Americans.  In the case of the Lincoln Project, these former Republicans have put their talents in action and have not only left the GOP but are in attack mode against Trump and now many of his Republican enablers.  The slick ads and go for the jugular nature of the Lincoln Projects ads has gotten the attention of Democrats some of whom - myself included - have donated to their anti-Trump mission. A piece at MSN.com looks at the Lincoln Project and its ambitious agenda, part of which includes driving Trump crazy (sorry, but Trump's misery is my pleasure).  Here are article highlights:

George Conway, a prominent conservative critic of President Trump and the husband of White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, had a wild theory that he could singlehandedly get Donald Trump to “trash” Jesus Christ.

His plan? Run an ad on cable news networks in Washington, D.C., that said, “‘Jesus says love thy neighbor, but Donald Trump doesn’t.”  “You could see Trump coming out and saying, ‘Well, Jesus never had to put up with the abuse I have!’” Conway joked in a recent podcast interview with the other founders of his super PAC.

It was out of this instinct to troll the president — and Conway’s knowledge that Trump, as an eager consumer of cable news, would be tantalizingly easy to reach — that the Lincoln Project was born. The super PAC, which was founded in December by Conway and prominent “NeverTrump” current and former Republican political strategists including Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, and Jennifer Horn, didn’t take long to hit its mark.

“They’re all LOSERS” Trump responded a little before 1 a.m. on Twitter in May after seeing one of the group’s ads unfavorably compare his coronavirus response to Ronald Reagan. “RINO losers … I BEAT THEM ALL!” he followed up the next day, using the acronym for Republicans In Name Only.

Now, Democrats have also begun paying attention to the Lincoln Project’s relentlessly negative election-year assault on [Trump] the president, and the way in which the super PAC rapidly creates ads that are designed to enrage and distract Trump and hyper-targets them onto his TV screen.

“These are the best ads on television. They’re absolutely devastating,” said former presidential candidate and Vermont governor Howard Dean, who complimented the group’s founders on the “controlled rage” that fuels their spots.

The Lincoln Project hasn’t pursued the Jesus ad prank. But whether they’re making fun of Trump for (allegedly) being ripped off by his campaign manager, for looking shaky while walking down a ramp, for bungling the nation’s coronavirus response, or even for the size of his hands and the crowd at his recent Tulsa rally, the Lincoln Project is willing to go places that Democratic groups haven’t. And that is drawing attention — and even money — from liberals.

“I am thrilled by the Lincoln Project’s impact, their substance and also their messaging, which is so compelling,” said Robert Zimmerman, a Democratic National Committee member and fund-raiser, who said he’s heard other Democrats say they’re donating to the group. “Quite frankly, Democrats, activists, and patriots should be grateful for their involvement and there shouldn’t be any competition.”

The Lincoln Project’s “Mourning in America” ad, which prompted Trump’s angry tweets, featured images of worried-looking Americans in hospital wards or waiting in long lines paired with somber violin music. A narrator warns that Trump has made America “weaker and sicker and poorer” as the slickly produced ad contrasts Trump’s performance on coronavirus to Ronald Reagan’s hopeful “Morning in America” reelection slogan.

More recently, the group has bought ads that stalk Trump as he travels around the country. One that aired in Tulsa before his June rally compared Trump’s rhetoric to the segregationist George Wallace, splicing Trump’s image with that of Wallace and tiki torch-toting white supremacist protesters. Another airing in South Dakota, where Trump visited on Friday, features the somber words of the nation’s presidents who are carved into Mount Rushmore. Trump’s image then pops up and a narrator warns, “America’s worst president will neither be remembered nor revered.”

The Lincoln Project is the most high-profile of several Republican anti-Trump groups vowing to spend money to defeat him. Its founders, who also include Reed Galen, Ron Steslow, Mike Madrid, and John Weaver, bring extensive political pedigrees to the task.

The group’s founders have their share of critics: Republican operatives who see them as traitors, the president who has ranted about them, and Democrats who question whether their trolling of Trump and thus-far limited budget will really influence voters in the handful of swing states that decide elections.

But the Lincoln Project’s relatively modest output so far, including some ads that seemed solely aimed at an audience of one, is racking up millions of views on social media, their reach amplified by the subsequent response from the president and related news coverage.

“When he started going after us directly, it highlighted and magnified his incompetence,” said Horn. “A president who is awake at 1 o’clock in the morning using a teenager’s medium to go after political operatives for saying something that he perceived to be mean about him? It is such a reflection of him being weak.”

There’s also an aspect of psychological warfare at play, as the strategists hope the more the president engages with their ads, the less he has time to focus on a reelection message. Wilson has a running gag on Twitter that he and Conway are living “rent free” in Trump’s head.

“It throws him off the message that he should have been on … and it also shows how nuts he is,” Conway said on the podcast.

The Lincoln Project has made other enemies in the Republican Party. Galen said on the group’s podcast that the GOP had “fundamentally changed” and that Trump’s “enablers” in the Senate need to be “washed out of the system as well.”

This kind of talk — and the super PAC’s spending against vulnerable Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Cory Gardner of Colorado — have caused great animus among other Republican operatives, even those who have been critical of Trump.

“They’re not just going after Trump, they’re going after Republican senators,” said Ryan Williams, a former top aide to Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential run. “These aren’t Republicans disaffected with the president. They’re just Democrats now.”

Privately, Democratic strategists and donors have wondered what’s driving the Lincoln Project to campaign against Republicans more broadly. Are they planning on rebranding as centrist Democratic operatives if presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins the White House, given some of the founders, including Schmidt, have already left the party?

But the Lincoln Project’s founders say they were driven by conscience to do whatever they can to deny Trump a second term, after witnessing what they said is his disrespect for the rule of law. At the group’s launch event in February, Wilson said he’d watched former colleagues and bosses “abase themselves and abandon their principles” and could not stand by any longer.

The Lincoln Project recently released a pro-Biden ad that will be airing in Midwestern swing states. It portrayed Biden speaking inspirationally along with clips of other presidents comforting the nation at times of crisis, juxtaposed with Trump’s comments showing a lack of empathy for people protesting racism and police brutality. Barack Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe called the ad “stirring.” Future spots will focus on persuading Republicans to abandon Trump, the strategists say.

“I appreciate the success that we’ve achieved so far, but honestly we have barely begun,” said Horn. “Donald Trump should not expect a good night’s sleep in the White House ever again. If he was upset with us at 1 a.m. — then just wait.”

Never Trumpers Will Host Their Own "Republican Convention"

In some ways I respect the "Never Trump" Republicans and former Republicans in that they have put principle and I would argue basic decency ahead of party unlike those in the GOP who have shamelessly prostituted themselves to Trump, Lindsey Graham being but one of many examples.  On the other hand, had these same Never Trump Republicans ceased being apologists for horrid GOP policies and a take from the poor to give to the rich agenda with a heavy dose of Christian nationalism years earlier, perhaps the GOP could have been saved from a Trump takeover. I left the GOP decades ago now because I saw where the party was headed and in good conscience simply could not be part of it. Am I now a Democrat?  Yes, but by default at first and now because of the national emergency of sending Trump - and those who sold their souls to him and to Christofascists and white supremacists - into forced retirement.    Anything that weakens GOP unity and can peel off votes from Trump and Trump Republicans (a term that is the opposite of what the GOP elected officials once stood for) is to be applauded.  And yes, I have donated to the Lincoln Project because its anti-Trump ads are first class. Now, the anti-Trump movement is going to have its own convention to run concurrent with the Trump/GOP gathering in Charlotte which will likely be part religious crusade and KKK rally.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this development.  Here are highlights:

Conservative critics of President Trump will hold a convention of their own during the Republican National Convention, with plans to craft their own statement of principles and offer it to a post-Trump electorate.

“The Trump administration has failed, and that’s provided us with an opportunity to offer an alternative vision,” said Evan McMullin, who ran against Trump as an independent in 2016 and has been part of multiple anti-Trump efforts since then. “We’ll be ready in the wake of what we see as a coming Trump defeat.”

The Convention on Founding Principles is scheduled to run from Aug. 24 to Aug. 27 in Charlotte, the city hosting this year’s RNC. The Republicans for a New President campaign, the chief organizer of the event, is planning an online component and a backup plan for a virtual convention if the RNC is canceled. Asked about the plans on Friday morning, the president’s campaign brushed them off.

“These Trump haters are sad, pathetic, and irrelevant,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtagh.

The Convention on Founding Principles grew out of an event Trump critics held at the National Press Club this year, concurrent with the Conservative Political Action Conference. Organizers were pleasantly surprised when more than 300 people attended their counter-conference, prompting a move to a larger room.

The August event, said McMullin, would more closely resemble an actual political convention. There will be debates and voting on a statement of the attendees’ principles, and a vote on whether they supported a particular candidate for president — presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, or a “well-known third-party candidate.”

“After Trump’s expected loss to a cross-partisan coalition of voters in 2020, principled conservatives will continue to pursue a new direction for the party through a range of activities, intellectual, electoral and otherwise,” McMullin said. ‘Since 2016, principled conservatives have become more organized and more effective and this convention and campaign represent the next steps in the development of this strengthening movement.”

‘Never Trump’ Republicans Endorse Biden

With Bernie Sanders ending his presidential campaign - the Green Party which by default elected Donald Trump is seeking to woe his followers despite Sanders' pledge to support Joe Biden - has set the stage for a full focus on ending America's other national emergency: ending the presidency of Donald Trump.  While Biden was never my ideal candidate, he must become the vehicle by which Trump is sent into retirement (and hopefully, criminal prosecution down the road) and it is urgent that anyone who cares for the rule of law and the progressive policies Sanders endorses get behind Biden.  Even many former Republicans see this truth, so one can only hope that Sanders supporters smell the coffee and get on board to defeat the worse and most dangerous occupant of the White in the nation's history.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at endorsements Biden is receiving.  Here are highlights: 

Former vice president Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, amassed a diverse slate of new endorsements Wednesday from former primary challengers to friends-turned-foes of President Trump.

The list includes Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), who was a contender in the Democratic primary; Anthony Scaramucci, onetime Trump champion and short-lived White House communications director; and the Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans led by George Conway.

Bennet announced that he was endorsing the former vice president hours after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dropped out of the race.

“Americans are asking two questions in this election: Who can beat Donald Trump, and who can get anything done? That candidate is former Vice President Joe Biden, and I am proud to endorse him for President of the United States,” Bennet said in a statement.
 The Lincoln Project is an organization made up of Republicans that cites its mission as defeating “President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.” The most high-profile member is George Conway, husband to White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and frequent Trump critic.

“We are proud to endorse @JoeBiden for President,” the group tweeted. “As America contends with unprecedented loss, we need a leader who can steady the ship, heal our common wounds, and lead us into our next national chapter. Joe Biden has the humanity, empathy and steadiness we need in a leader.”

The Belated Conversion of Former Republicans

While the increase of the number of Never Trumpers has been encouraging to watch, one thing that most of them are not quick to confess is that for far too long, most were apologists for toxic elements of the GOP base and GOP policies aimed at benefiting the few at the expense of the many as symbolized by both the GOP efforts to destroy the Affordable Health Care Act and the Trump/GOP tax cuts that did nothing other than provide a huge windfall to the very wealthy and large corporations while exploding the federal debt in the process.  And then there was the dishonesty and endless lies of the GOP that long preceded the rise of Trump.  The GOP has now become synonymous with lying and not just due to the endless lies emanating from the White House. The current impeachment inquiry has brought the dishonesty of the GOP to the forefront as laid out in a column in the Washington Post by a former Republican conservative who is among the Never Trump ranks.  Here are highlights:

When listening to President Trump and fellow Republicans throw around accusations against Democrats and the media or advance defenses for Trump’s impeachable conduct, there is a better than even chance they are misleading if not downright lying. In some cases, we discover the lies because other individuals are caught lying.

Roger Stone was convicted, among other things, of lying to Congress about his conversations with WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange. He falsely claimed: He had no emails, documents or texts relating to WikiLeaks; he never sought damaging information (i.e., emails) about Hillary Clinton; never contacted WikiLeaks through intermediaries; and never contacted the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks. The last lie — denying contacts with the Trump campaign — raises the question as to whether President Trump lied in responses to Robert S. Mueller II.

At the trial we learned about Stone’s numerous contacts with the campaign: Rick Gates, who served as Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, testified Tuesday that Stone began discussing Clinton leaks with the campaign in April 2016 and that from May onward Gates understood Stone to be the campaign’s intermediary with WikiLeaks. By July 2016, Gates testified, Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort said he was updating Trump and others regularly and directed Gates to keep following up with Stone. After Trump ended one phone call from Stone at the end of that month, Gates testified, the future president said to Gates that “more information would be coming.”

In his written answers, however, Trump claimed he had “no recollection” of conversations with Stone about WikiLeaks nor did he recall knowing Stone had discussed WikiLeaks’s email drops with the campaign. Perhaps Trump’s memory is addled; if not, it appears he lied to Mueller.

Likewise, in the Ukraine matter multiple witnesses gave testimony that suggests that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been telling falsehoods under oath. Some he has remedied, . . . However, we now know from at least one other witness that Sondland’s denial that he spoke to the president or to the State Department was false. (He spoke to both.) One wonders if he’ll share a similar fate as Stone, the former Trump confidant who this week was found guilty on charges of lying to Congress, obstruction of justice and witness tampering. CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale has documented 45 Trump lies concerning Ukraine . . . . Other Trump lies include his denial that United States military aid was held up, his bizarre accusations that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) was the whistleblower’s source and his unfounded allegations that former vice president Joe Biden “stole” millions of dollars from foreign countries and pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor when Hunter Biden was still under investigation.

House Republicans continually traffic in lies — e.g., Ukraine interfered with our election, Joe Biden’s conduct pressuring removal of a delinquent prosecutor was illegal or corrupt, Trump was concerned about Ukraine’s corruption in general.

On procedure, they’ve lied about the depositions (routinely used in investigations), claiming they violate “due process” or amount to a “Soviet-style” star chamber.

At times, Republicans deliberately ignore evidence in front of their eyes. They seem to have settled on the theory that Trump never communicated to Zelensky that aid was tied to investigations of Biden, Burisma and Trump’s crackpot Ukraine interference conspiracy. Trump, however, raised these items in the phone call. . . . .
 Republicans’ lies are so numerous and obvious that one requires only a minimal amount of fact-checking to see that they lie because they have no truthful factual defenses nor valid constitutional argument. The facts are the facts: Trump conditioned aid to an ally in a war for its sovereignty on production of dirt to smear a political rival. He has refused to allow key witnesses to produce documents or to testify, thereby obstructing Congress. He has sought to intimidate and threaten witnesses including the whistleblower and Marie Yovanovitch, sending out the message you will be targeted and smeared if you provide evidence against him.

As for the Constitution, we know that “bribery,” enumerated as one of the grounds for impeachment in the parlance of the Framers, includes asking for or giving personal favors in exchange for political acts. That is precisely what occurred here. Obstruction and witness intimidation are obviously "high crimes."

House Republicans have become so invested in crackpot theories, bogus procedural complains and constitutional illiteracy that they will never recognize the president’s wrongdoing. They are as incapable of upholding their oath, which requires impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanors or bribery, as he is. Both Trump and his House enablers are unfit to serve since personal and political considerations obliterate their ability to detect the truth and thereby to uphold their public obligations.

It remains an open question as to whether Senate Republicans are willing to ignore and distort reality so as to avoid voting to convict a president of their own party. Unfortunately, we find it highly unlikely that more than a few (if that many) would concede that Trump and the right-wing echo chamber that protects him have been spinning a web of lies for nearly three years.

The GOP web of lies goes back much further in time.  It is a shame that the Never Trumpers did not begin speaking out one to two decades ago.  Trump is the culmination of a pattern of lies that has stretched out for years. 

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.   

Are Never Trump Republicans Worth Democrats' Efforts?

As a former Republican - I left the GOP many years ago - I watch the antics and hand-wringing of never Trump Republicans with some skepticism.  For years as the GOP drifted towards becoming a party controlled by white supremacists and far right Christian religious extremists - the base that elected Donald Trump - these never Trumpers continually acted as apologists for GOP extremism and the war against Barack Obama waged by Mitch McConnell in the U.S. Senate and a who's who of the falsely named Christian Right.  Worse yet, in the 2016 election, many either held their noses and voted for Trump or voted for hapless third party candidates who had a snow ball's chance in Hell of winning so that such votes were a defacto vote for Trump.   Now that the handiwork of their actions has been fully realized and the GOP has become something truly hideous, some of them have the audacity to argue that Democrats ought to be kissing their asses and courting their votes. I'm sorry, but a vote for today's GOP and its candidates is, in my opinion, a vote for evil.  The ONLY alternative and way to fight that evil is to vote a straight Democrat ticket. A piece in Politico looks at the argument made by Mona Charen, a long apologist for the GOP and its worse policies who thinks she needs to be courted by Democrats.  I believe that the 2020 Democrat presidential candidates need to pursue moderation in their policies to win moderate voters, but I doubt the likes of Charen will ever be won over from the GOP that, like it or not, they helped create. Here are excerpts:

Dear 2020 Democrats—all 23 of you who are running for president:

You are itching to be rid of Donald Trump. Who can blame you? Of course, if this were a normal Republican presidency, I would not share your feelings. Not remotely. As a lifelong conservative, I think your policy ideas are ill-advised. But this cycle, other Trump-disgusted Republicans and I can contemplate voting Democrat. We could do so not because we’ve become progressives, but because we think it’s in the long-term interests of conservatism and the country to be rid of Trump. If he gains a second term, conservatism may well be irredeemably tarnished.

[L]et me make the case that you should court Republican refugees like me in 2020.

You may think you don’t need us—but you’d be wrong. I know things are looking good for you: Trump’s approval rating has never topped 46 percent, and among younger voters, millennials and Gen Zers, his support is 30 percent or below. But Trump was elected with the lowest approval ratings of any major candidate in history. Polls can disguise as well as reveal. The “shy Tory” phenomenon—in which voters seem disinclined to tell pollsters that they support conservatives—is real across the globe, as evidenced most recently by the upset victory of the conservatives (called “liberals”) in Australia. Right-wing populism continues to show strength worldwide as recent election results in Brazil, India, Hungary, Poland and the Philippines attest.

And if the results of the 2018 midterms have you feeling confident, you should look to the not-so-distant past. Democrats were pasted in the 2010 midterms and yet President Barack Obama glided painlessly to reelection in 2012.

While we’re on the subject of the midterms, remember that your 2018 victories were not a left-wing triumph. Your 40-seat pickup was due in no small measure to Republicans and independents who voted Democrat. In other words: Voters like me.

Democrats are well-positioned to win in 2020 by embracing political normalcy again. . . . Trump’s tenure has not, thankfully, featured pestilence or war. It’s more like the Three Stooges than the Four Horsemen. Still, today, many of us are prepared to put our long-term goals of balanced budgets and less government-controlled health care aside to feel some sense of political equilibrium again.

But that’s not the tone you are adopting. First, you seem taken with the idea of executive overreach. . . . This is precisely the kind of power grab that Trump engaged in when declaring his spurious state of emergency to redirect funds to his border wall. And though Democrats’ frustration with his lawlessness is justified, this would represent a total vindication of it. If Democrats respond to Trump’s arrogation of power by doing the same thing, our constitutional system is threatened.

The assertion of unlimited executive power is not just contrary to the Constitution; it’s also a recipe for rising political tensions. If I believe that a Democrat will propose legislation with which I disagree, I know I stand a good chance of having my representatives modify or even block it. That’s not true of executive action. The stakes of each presidential contest thus get ratcheted up, as both sides fear that the next president, unconstrained by Congress, can lurch the country in a dramatically new direction. That severely decreases the chances that all of you, hopeful Democrats, can bring more centrist voters over to your side.

Second, have some respect for the norms and institutions that undergird our system’s stability. You claim to be dismayed by Trump’s norm-shattering ways, and yet your proposals are political earthquakes.

Harris and Buttigieg also favor packing the Supreme Court. The court has had nine justices since 1869. Remember, when FDR attempted to pack the court in 1937, he was thwarted by his own party. If Democrats take this step, it will invite further erosions of tradition by the next Republican majority. And, like executive orders, it will heighten the sense that presidents are would-be emperors.

Sanders, Cory Booker, Harris, Warren, Julián Castro and Andrew Yang have endorsed the “Green New Deal,” and Amy Klobuchar and Gillibrand support the “aspirations” of the plan, if not the details. The plan would demand a vertiginous (in fact, impossible) reordering of our entire government and economy—for instance, by requiring the refurbishment of every single building in the country.

There’s a clear way forward, Democrats, and it is grounded in the Constitution. Do what you think is right—propose legislation to fix Obamacare or spend more on basic research of climate change or whatever—but in the constitutional way. No sweeping, federalism-smashing plans to overhaul everything in the name of your preferred policies. And please, don’t call for the abolition of traditions and constitutional structures, like the Electoral College, that make voters nervous about your stewardship.

Democrats would be wise to embrace that sensibility, in the person of Biden or another, not just because it could win, but because it’s important for all of us, right and left, to turn our faces away from Caesarism—of the right or the left.

Prediction Model That Nailed 2018: Trump Will Lose

Like many, I view Donald Trump as a foul and abhorrent individual and worry that the nation could not survive if he were to be re-elected in 2020.  According to a researcher at nearby Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, that widespread sense of dread and loathing may be what is key in seeing Trump defeated in 2010. Apathetic Democrat voters who stayed home in 2016 - as well as Never Trump Republicans who threw away their votes on third party candidates - elected Trump.  According to this researcher who correctly predicted the Democrat gains in the House of Representatives in 2018 believes no such apathy will be witnessed in 2020.  I hope and pray that she is correct and the long national nightmare ends in January, 2021.  Here are highlights from The Hill:

The prediction model that accurately predicted Democratic gains in the House four months before the 2018 midterm elections says President Trump will lose his reelection bid.

The latest "Negative Partisanship" model by Rachel Bitecofer, the assistant director of the Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University, released Monday, predicts Trump will lose the Electoral College with the Democratic candidate earning 278 votes.

The model predicts Trump will earn 197 electoral votes. That leaves 63 votes a toss-up – still not enough to overcome the Democrat's lead.  Bitecofer highlighted Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as states the incumbent will have difficulty winning this time around.

"The complacent electorate of 2016, who were convinced Trump would never be president, has been replaced with the terrified electorate of 2020, who are convinced he’s the Terminator and can’t be stopped," she said. "Under my model, that distinction is not only important, it is everything."  She also pointed to his low approval rating among independents as an impediment to a second term.

Bitecofer's model predicted a 42 seat House Democratic pickup in 2018, and the Democrats won 40. Many other models did not predict such a large victory.

She acknowledged the Democratic candidate has not been chosen yet, but argued it is not incredibly important who the nominee is.

"Does the Democrat’s nominee matter? Sure, to an extent. If the ticket has a woman, a person of color or a Latino, or a female who is also a person of color, Democratic Party turnout will surge more in really important places," Bitecofer wrote. "If the nominee is Biden he’d be well-advised to consider Democratic voter turnout his number one consideration when drawing his running mate to avoid the critical mistake made by Hillary Clinton in 2016."

"But the Democrats are not complacent like they were in 2016 and I doubt there is any amount of polling or favorable forecasts that will make them so. That fear will play a crucial role in their 2020 victory. We will not see a divided Democratic Party in 2020," she wrote.

How Republicans Benefit From Losing the White House in 2020

From time to time I encounter former colleagues from my days in the Republican Party who ask what would it take to get me to come back to the GOP. The easiest answer is to simply say that the GOP would have to drop its anti-gay agenda and cease its unholy alliance with anti-gay Christofascists. That response usually ends the line of discussion, especially since most of my former colleagues have always been moderates and don't like the power of the Christofascists in today's GOP.  But beyond that response, much more would have to change in the GOP, including its rejection of an agenda that is the antithesis of Christ's gospel message and, the removal of Trump and his supporters.  I suspect that there are many former Republicans and moderates who hold similar views.  Indeed, a column in New York Magazine argues that the GOP would benefit from a Trump defeat in 2020.  That is certainly true, in my view, if the party wants to regain any shred of moral decency.  Here are article highlights:

While the public ranks of anti-Trump Republicans have shrunk into insignificance by now, it’s still clear — from anecdotal evidence via Republican friends, and from every disclosure of daily business in the White House, whose MAGA warriors regularly mock and thwart POTUS — that while the GOP has solidly lined up behind Trump’s agenda and reelection campaign, there are still serious intraparty misgivings about the Boss. Smart Republicans would have to either laugh or cry or roll their eyes at such astonishing examples of presidential cluelessness as his threat to “head to the U.S. Supreme Court” to stop impeachment proceedings.

Still, in sports and in politics, your team is your team, and to the extent that the GOP’s fate is bound up in Trump’s for the time being, all the eye-rolling is largely kept in private. But you have to figure some Republicans are looking ahead to 2020 and seeing a silver lining in a possible narrow Trump reelection loss, at least so long as the GOP holds onto the Senate.

That’s an entirely plausible scenario, as it happens. Republicans go into 2020 with a 53-47 Senate majority. Only three Republican incumbents are currently rated as vulnerable by the Cook Political Report, and none of them is as endangered as Alabama Democrat Doug Jones. Add in the lively prospect that Joe Manchin may resign his seat to run for governor, almost certainly giving the GOP another Senate seat from Trump-loving West Virginia, and the odds of a GOP Senate in 2021 look quite good, even if Trump again loses the popular vote and doesn’t again pull off the inside straight of an Electoral College victory.

Yes, a Democratic White House would mean the end of any grand schemes of conservative policy revolution, and might put off consolidation of an aggressively right-wing Supreme Court (one willing, say, to flatly reverse Roe v. Wade) for a bit. That last factor alone will keep many conservative Evangelicals praying for a Trump win. But consider the advantages to the GOP of a narrow loss:

· The economy won’t keep growing forever. Losing the White House in 2020 makes it more likely Democrats will get the blame for a turndown or a recession — as they largely did after Barack Obama was elected in 2008.

· If Trump is reelected, the 2022 midterms could be a bloodbath for his party, as second-term midterms often are. Twenty-two of the 34 Senate seats up in 2022 are currently held by Republicans. They could use a wind behind them to maintain control.

· A Trump loss, even if it’s narrow, would likely break the grip of Trumpism on the party, keeping its options open for a future in which demographic change makes his brand of white identity politics increasingly perilous. If Trump wins a second term, Mike Pence becomes the presumptive successor, unless the president decides Ivanka is ready to run.

· Republicans are temperamentally better suited to being the “out party” rather than the governing party, as its paltry legislative accomplishments in 2017–2018 showed, despite total control of the federal government.

Republicans would undoubtedly feel pain at the loss of federal patronage that losing the White House would involve; job prospects in Real America for those young men wearing MAGA hats might not be as robust as they might imagine. And if a Trump loss in 2020 also damages GOP positioning in governorships and state legislatures on the brink of the decennial Census (perhaps offset by the thumb on the scales the administration is trying to administer through a citizenship question on the Census), the costs of defeat might be too high and too lasting.

But if Republicans can thread the needle, any tears they shed on Trump’s behalf on November 3, 2020, might be of the crocodile variety. And for the secret band of suppressed Trump-loathers in the GOP (yes, we know you’re there), it’s a more likely recipe for redemption than some doomed primary challenge by William Weld or Larry Hogan.

Romney Directs Broadside at Trump;,Condemns Trump's Amoral Behavior

While it is far too late in the process and should have been even more searing - two and a half or three years ago would have been far better - in advance of his being sworn in as a member of the U.S. Senate Mitt Romney directed a broadside at Donald Trump's failures and tied them to Trump's amorality.  He did so in an op-ed in the Washington Post.  Here's a sampling:

It is well known that Donald Trump was not my choice for the Republican presidential nomination. After he became the nominee, I hoped his campaign would refrain from resentment and name-calling. It did not. When he won the election, I hoped he would rise to the occasion. . . . his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that [Trump] the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.

To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. . . . presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.

I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.

Needless to say, the op-ed provoked a Hitleresque temper tantrum on the party of Der  Trumpenführer, who along with his boot-licking sycophants now see Romney as a potential rival for 2020.  Articles in The Daily Beast and Politico both look at the new dynamic and paranoia gripping the foul occupant of the White House.  First, this from The Daily Beast:

Mitt Romney isn’t even sworn in as a U.S. senator yet, and he’s already triggered the heck out of President Stompy-Foot, the Toddler in Chief. Within hours of Romney’s searing op-ed in The Washington Post, Trump’s itchy Twitter finger got the best of him . . . .

Trump has always reserved his most bitter ire, vicious personal attacks, and gratuitous smears for Republicans, particularly those who dare to question his execrable judgment, daily outrages against conservatism, or hand size. Just as Trump insults and belittles our allies while offering Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and the rest of the Lil Dictators Club things like foot massages and sweet love notes, he attacks Republicans with a spleen rarely displayed toward Democrats.

Romney’s editorial is in many ways a bookend to his 2016 speech condemning Trump. . . . . That call to arms went sadly unheeded, and every prediction he made concerning Trump’s disastrous reign of misrule is playing out.

The alleged party of fiscal discipline bought a couple of trillion in debt for a tax bill benefiting a handful of hedge funds, billionaires, and corporations. . . . . Trump has demonstrated his comfort with failure and bankruptcy over and over again as a master rooking the greater-fools in a long cycle of borrow-and-bust business flops. He assumes he’ll be out of office when the bills come due.

Romney, in his speech, also highlighted Trump’s “bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd third-grade theatrics,” all of which have become staples of a performative presidency that is always more about heat than light. Every one of Romney’s predictions and calls about Trump from 2016 rang true then, and are proven out today.

And here’s the thing: Most Republicans knew Romney was right then and they sure as hell know he’s right today . . . . . Mitt Romney, the Enemy of the State, is a role I imagine he never thought he’d play in American political life, but the impact of his words is causing a full-fledged meltdown in the Trump-supporting media apparatus on the right.

Behind Trump’s bluster and swagger, and the 10-toothed roar of his arena faithful, the GOP just had its collective head kicked in during the 2018 campaign. The loss of 40 House seats, the trade-war disaster, a volatile stock market, a teetering economy, the reality of Mueller’s growing case against the Maximum Leader, and Trump’s foreign-policy recklessness have left Republican elected officials disheartened and shell-shocked.

Mitt Romney’s editorial is making the rounds for speaking the words that much of the GOP lacks the courage to put their names behind.  Many of the voices rising to condemn him are secretly whispering, “Mitt, it was great. I agree with you, but I have to defend him, you know. I’ve got to worry about a primary…”

The piece in Politico offers this:

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel connected with President Donald Trump by phone on Tuesday evening with some alarming news: Mitt Romney, her uncle, was about to publish an op-ed savaging him.

The next morning, as Romney’s op-ed took hold of the news cycle, McDaniel, Trump’s handpicked party chairwoman, sent out an even more strongly worded tweet scolding her uncle

In the op-ed, Romney argues that Trump "has not risen to the mantle of the office," blew up a delicate détente between the two men. And it immediately fueled suspicions among [Trump's] the president’s top aides that the incoming senator is up to something — maybe even keeping the door open to a 2020 primary challenge.

At a time when talk of a 2020 GOP primary has simmered, Trump aides said Romney, on the eve of his swearing in to the Senate, was seeking to define himself as the new leader of the Never Trump movement. . . . . And former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon argued that Romney had launched a “direct challenge to Trump for leadership.”

He [Romney] was well aware that the op-ed would ignite a media firestorm and that it would be seen as a key moment in his early Senate career, something he would be asked about repeatedly in the halls of the Capitol.

But as the new year neared, Romney found himself increasingly frustrated with [Trump] the president, the person close to Romney said.

Trump aides worry that a primary challenge would become an unwelcome distraction for the president’s reelection campaign and potentially turn the 2020 GOP convention into a circus. They note that no Republican president has won reelection after a contested primary and point to George H.W. Bush’s bruising 1992 primary against Pat Buchanan as evidence of the damage an incumbent can suffer.

Let's hope that Trump has a primary challenge - assuming he isn't removed from office before then - and that the GOP convention is a circus of epic proportions.

Conservative Alabama Newspaper Endorses Hillary Clinton

As I have noted a number of times in the past, I lived in Alabama many years ago and compared to how the state is nowadays, things were far more sane three decades ago.  Now, much to my surprise, even the Mobile Press Register - typically a reactionary newspaper - has endorsed Hillary Clinton and described Donald Trump as too dangerous to be permitted to win the White House.  I agree with the assessment which ought to be read in full by Republicans still waffling and contemplating voting for Trump.  Perhaps there is hope for Alabama after all.  Here are editorial highlights:

Donald Trump must not be president.

Alabama has voted for every Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan, a man that captured our imagination with a hopeful view of America as a shining city upon a hill. Nearly 40 years later, Donald Trump offers a deeply cynical view of an America in ruin, an America that seems to exist only in his own dangerous mind. Even before the revelation of video evidence of Trump making lewd, demeaning comments advocating sexual advances on women against their will, we knew that he was unfit to lead this country. We unite with people across this nation — people of all parties, including an increasing number of Republicans — to reject the pessimism of his candidacy.

But 2016 isn't a normal election cycle, and Donald Trump isn't a normal presidential candidate. Nor is he a normal Republican. He is a man who is frighteningly unfit to be president. And she is his only roadblock.

Any endorsement of Clinton will be a bitter pill to swallow for many in our state. For some, her lifelong record of public service is the mark of a career politician, rather than a public servant. We've all watched her struggle to defend her emails, her charitable foundation and her record on foreign policy. Still, Hillary Clinton is more than qualified to be president, and in winning her party's nomination has reinforced the promise that our democratic process is equally open to all.

Like her husband, President Bill Clinton, she has built a political career out of triangulating to the center. She's less liberal than President Barack Obama and less conservative than President George W. Bush — and after 16 years of volatility, she is likely to maintain the slow growth of the status quo.

We could do worse than four years of a stable hand that understands how government works and is willing to compromise with the Republican opposition. Donald Trump, in contrast, is an unstable force that would do lasting damage to America, at home and abroad.

The list of Trump's disqualifications is lengthy. And he adds new ones daily. 

Clinton has been caught in lies, but Donald Trump trashes truth far beyond the standards that even our broken political system accepts.

He is a narcissistic, childish bully who has mocked women, Americans with disabilities, veterans, Gold Star families, judges, immigrants, the working poor, people of faith, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans, refugees, people with weight issues and any other group that challenges his inflated view of himself. A Trump presidency could send the Republican Party down a dark, exclusionary path, that would be tough to recover from.

Alabama may have been host to many of Trump's largest crowds during the Republican primary, but it has become clear that his policies would hurt many here.

Rather than bring jobs home, Trump's pledge to break trade agreements such as NAFTA and to implement a tariff on goods coming from Mexico and China could ignite a trade war, crippling port cities like Mobile and stunting growth in emerging economies in Birmingham and Huntsville.

Trump shows a staggering ignorance of world affairs and the issues the next president faces. He dismisses our obligations to NATO; he invites China to "go into" North Korea and settle things in that part of the world, and he has a disturbing infatuation with Vladimir Putin. For all his talk about demonstrating American strength, he constantly undermines our troops.

Trump embodies the worse tenets of disgraced former Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, and humiliated Gov. Robert Bentley. Trump is a man that will ignore the rule of law, use his office for personal gain, and has a history of lascivious affairs and lewd comments caught on tape. Even his campaign is self-serving, with millions in campaign donations spent on his family companies.

The 2016 election is not a choice between two candidates equally fit to serve, or a choice between the ideology of two parties. Trump is a unique threat and in an election where supporting third party candidates splits a national vote, we see but one option.

Clinton may be the second least popular major party candidate in 50 years but she is also one of the most qualified candidates in history. And ultimately, if it isn't her, it's him. And that would be a disaster for America and the world.