Republicans Are Abetting a Demagogue - Or Something Worse

Other than a few email exchanges, I do not know Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson - a former George W. Bush White House official - but we do share some views on (i) the harm being done to Christianity by evangelical Christians/Christodascists, and (ii) the harm - almost treason, in my view - being done by Donald Trump's enablers and apologists in the Republican Party (like me, I suspect Gerson is now a former Republican).  In a column in the Washington Post, Gerson takes to task the Republicans - an certain media outlets (think Fox News) - who are aiding in the agenda of a dangerous demagogue at best and, at worse, potential autocrat.  All patriotic Americans should be alarmed and pressure Republicans in their districts to put the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law above protecting Trump.  Here are column excerpts:

Much about the future of American politics — and the historical judgment that will be visited on those associated with it — depends on the answer to one question: Is President Trump an instinctual demagogue or an instinctual authoritarian?

On most days, the evidence favors the former interpretation. Trump often acts like a desperate, self-interested politician, convinced that his enemies fight dirty and determined to out-slime them. So he pursues a strategy of character assassination against the special counsel . . .

Then there are other days — and more and more of them — that justify the latter interpretation. Rather than a politician trying to muddy the waters, Trump seems more like a strongman probing the limits of democracy. He seems less like Clinton and more like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, seeking to dismantle institutional checks on his authority. 

The current flashpoint is the FBI probe of Russian influence on the Trump campaign — an investigation that has made use of an informant in pursuit of information from suspicious Trump associates. Trump has transformed this person into a “spy” who was “implanted, for political purposes, into my campaign,” constituting one of the “biggest political scandals in history.” This is accurate, except there was no spy, who was not implanted in the Trump campaign, in the course of an entirely legitimate investigation. And Trump’s charge of political motivation is absurd on its face . . .

But [Trump's] the president’s evident goal has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with power. Since the early days of his administration, Trump has believed that federal law enforcement should be under his personal control. He has sought loyalty oaths and tried to make FBI investigations stop and start. Now he has seized on a conspiracy theory to undermine public confidence in the FBI. And the future of that institution now hangs by the thread of a few officials committed to the rule of law and the independence of law enforcement.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), which has become a laughably partisan alibi factory for [Trump] the president. Or the Republican Party, which has become a pathetic propaganda tool for a leader who reviles his own party. For Trump, this is what loyalty looks like: subservience. Putting federal law enforcement under his personal, political control would be a danger to the constitutional order.

There is an authoritarian playbook, used (with some variations) in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela and Russia. Dismantle checks on executive power. Control the criminal-justice system. Scapegoat minority groups. Co-opt mainstream parties. Discredit the independent media. Call for opponents to be jailed. Question the legitimacy of elections. Claim to be the embodied soul of the people.

Trump has praised and congratulated leaders who have done all these things . . . . And he has attempted some parts of the authoritarian playbook himself, particularly in his systematic attacks on law enforcement and the media, and his self-conception as the voice for “real Americans.”

If his ambitions are autocratic, the cowardice of elected Republicans is indefensible and near to unforgivable. Trump’s enablers in politics and the media are reducing the political cost of undemocratic rhetoric and behavior. They are hurting the country in sad and lasting ways. And it has become urgent to wake their sleeping courage.

Sadly, I believe Gerson over estimates the "courage" and moral decency of today's Republicans. I hope that I am wrong, but suspect that today's GOP will continue to aid and abet in the destruction of America's democracy and constitutional government. 

The Trump/Putin Threat to the West

When he had his blog, The Dish, I was a daily reader.  Now, Andrew Sullivan is back with a weekly "conversation" at New York Magazine.  As he was want to do on his blog, he again gets to the heart of matters from a moderate conservative perspective.  He is horrified at the spectacle of Der Trumpenführer and the twin menace that he and Vladimir Putin pose to the West as we have known it for my entire lifetime.  Frighteningly, Sullivan gets to the reality that Trump wants to be the American equivalent of Putin and to rule and loot the nation as Putin has done to Russia.  His attacks on the media and constant bleating about fake news is a critical first step in his authoritarian agenda. Meanwhile, I continue to feel as if the country is living a Tom Clancy or David Baldacci novel. Can America's institution defeat this foul effort?  Here are excerpts from Sullivan's latest column:

The question that remains, of course, is the motive.

Why on Earth would any campaign for president be in constant, secret touch with the intelligence agents of a hostile foreign power?

I cannot know. Maybe Flynn is a rogue loner. It’s also possible, I guess, that the Trump campaign just wanted to keep in touch with the intelligence services of one of this country’s nemeses, if only to wish them Merry Christmas — five times in one day. It’s also conceivable that Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort’s deep ties to the Putin regime were utterly irrelevant to the sudden amendment, this past summer, to the GOP party platform that removed a call to send arms to Ukraine. It’s also possible, I suppose, that deep down I’m straight.

But there’s one explanation that chills me even more than a foreign power’s potential blackmail over an American president. And it is that Trump and Putin are natural allies in their fight against the postwar, U.S.-led international order that has kept the peace for 70 years. Putin and Trump, after all, share a Bannonite foreign policy: a robust defense of nationalism; a view that NATO is obsolete; support for far-right parties throughout Europe; and the goal of smashing the European Union so that Russia can once again extend its tentacles into Eastern Europe, and the U.S. can play one European power off another. I have no idea if Putin has kompromat on the president, but Trump’s actions need no such motivation. Trump and Putin want to form a pincer movement to destroy what we have known for a long time as the West.

Their domestic politics also have disturbing parallels. Trump would love nothing more, it seems to me, than to be an American Putin, treating the country as he long treated his own corporate fiefdom. He once explained he admired the autocrat because Putin has “great control over his country.” Like Putin, Trump would love to control the media. Like Putin, he has developed a leadership cult, devoted to the masses. Like Putin, he believes in a government that has “killers.” Like Putin, he threatens his geographic neighbors. Like Putin, he has cultivated an alliance of convenience with reactionary religious conservatives, to shore up his power. Like Putin, he believes there’s no moral difference between American democracy and Russia’s. Like Putin, he is enriching himself by public office. And, like Putin, he has targeted a minority as a scapegoat — Putin targeted the gays to gin up support while Trump targets the Muslims and Mexicans. And as Putin has RT as his conduit, so Trump has the Murdoch empire.

Steve Bannon, on the other hand, is quite something. I’ve read and reread his 2014 speech at the Vatican to see if I can find any coherence in it, and I confess I failed. It’s a hodgepodge of melodrama, hysteria, and a defense of some kind of “enlightened capitalism” along Judeo-Christian lines, in the face of an imminent Islamist takeover of the planet. It’s the 1950s versus jihad, an attempt to convey the gist of the entire Drudge Report every day and turn it into a thesis. He argues that we are just “at the very beginning stages of a global conflict” that could eradicate 2,000 years of Western civilization. It reads like the apocalyptic, paranoid fantasies of someone who writes letters to the editor, single-spaced, in all caps.

Be very afraid if Trump and Putin are not stopped.