Trump Speaks Volumes About the Danger Posed by the GOP Base

Perhaps I cannot totally escape my Roman Catholic upbringing despite the moral bankruptcy of the Church hierarchy as evidenced by the world wide sex abuse of children and youths and it's embrace of 12th Century knowledge.  Or perhaps it was the views of my parents who saw things as clearly as right and others as clearly wrong.  The follow through was that one did not associate with or support someone or groups who consistently engaged in wrongful behavior such as taking from the poor to give to the rich, failing to help the poor sick or needy, expressing open hatred for others and refusing to see their humanity.  These values are what I deem true "Christian" values.  Yet, for the vast majority of evangelical Christians and others who claim to be decent and moral, these values have been openly rejected by their support for Donald Trump and today's hideous incarnation of the Republican Party.   They put their loyalty to a political party that makes misogyny the norm ahead of the values they pretend to support.  Equally disturbing is their growing contempt for others who are different due to skin color, the country of their birth, their sexual orientation or their religious faith.  Only white, heterosexual, right wing Christians are deemed to be fully human.  This new orthodoxy of Republicans is frightening and dangerous.  The common good no longer matters to them, nor do the less fortunate, including children.  A column in the New York Times looks at the allegiance of the GOP base to Trump and its growing embrace of hate.  Here are excerpts:

Last year, as it became clear that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination, analysts on both the right and the left speculated that millions of regular Republicans would be repulsed by his ethnonationalism and misogyny. 

Come Election Day, however, Republican voters did not abandon their party. . . . . This pattern has continued into the present and shows no signs of letting up. In recent days, prominent Republicans, including George W. Bush, Bob Corker, John McCain and Jeff Flake, have warned in various ways that Trump is leading their party and the country in a very dangerous direction. For the moment, however, it is the president’s critics who are butting their heads against a brick wall. The reality is that neither Flake nor Corker is seeking re-election, and both would have struggled to win renomination if they presented themselves as adversaries of President Trump.

In short, the Trump-Steve Bannon-Laura Ingraham wing of the Republican party is ascendant. As Mike Allen headlined his post on Axios Wednesday: “Virtually every Republican now a Trump Republican.”

Alex Theodoridis, a political scientist at the University of California-Merced, put the state of play in a larger perspective: “The real story of Election 2016 is that the vast majority of Republicans voted for Trump” despite the fact that he was an outlier candidate who “lacked the normal credentials in terms of experience, ideology and character.” “Republicans identify, at a deep psychological level, more strongly with their party than do Democrats,” according to Theodoridis: The evidence is rather clear that the modern hyper-polarization is far more characterized by tribal division than by ideological distance. The real story seems to be the growing us-versus-them, in-group/out-group dynamic.

Theodoridis summed up the conclusions he and his colleagues reached in a blog post in Scientific American in November 2016: Partisanship for many Americans today takes the form of a visceral, even subconscious, attachment to a party group. Our party becomes a part of our self-concept in deep and meaningful ways.

In other words, the assumption that many Republican voters would be repelled by Donald Trump turned out to be wrong; instead party loyalty — “a visceral, even subconscious, attachment” — takes precedence.

These expressive partisans also feel increased schadenfreude, a complex positive emotion, when they read about bad things happening to or reflecting poorly on a political candidate of the other party. They even feel this positive emotion in reaction to events that are clearly negative. . . . . voters “not only increasingly dislike the opposing party,” but are also willing to “impute negative traits to the rank-and-file of the out-party.”

The growing strength of the kind of partisanship that is widespread today — whether you call it visceral, expressive, affective or tribal — undermines the workings of democratic governance.
 A number of questions present themselves to us as a nation, most notably: Where are we going? Off a cliff appears to be the answer for now, but who is going to help us climb back up? What can mitigate these developments except disaster? Over time, will we just swing back and forth between parties with no bipartisan achievements at all? What phoenix will rise from the ashes of our tribal partisanship?

Of course, this phenomenon is not limited to the United States. It is a worldwide problem, which is another way of extending the question. Germany, France and the Netherlands have one answer, still refusing to yield government control to right-wing populists despite the success of ethonationalist insurgencies in all three countries; Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary have another answer — they are all currently swerving to the far right. Which path will we take?

Congressional Republicans Are Running From Their Constituents

Congressional Republicans have been displaying amazing arrogance and hubris in the wake of the 2016 presidential election and claiming that they have a mandate even though their now embattled party leader lost the popular vote by almost 3,000,000 votes and had less than a 80,000 margin of victory spread across 3 Electoral College states. Now, with Der Trumpenführer becoming more toxic by the day and potentially looking at treason charges and with dimwitted GOP voters realizing that the GOP agenda just might not be in their best interest, the arrogance is that had been on display is turning into fear: fear of these Republicans' own constituents.  Indeed, it has gotten so bad that some Congressional Republicans have resorted to the lie that protesters are all being paid by some mysterious source.  Anything rather admit that the GOP victory may be quickly turning into a Pyrrhic one.  A column in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon which is self-inflicted.  Here are excerpts:

Republican Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois has a safe seat in Congress. So what’s he running from?

First, supporters of the Affordable Care Act showed up at his office for a previously scheduled meeting with his staff. But the 16 of them were turned away when Roskam staffers discovered they were accompanied by a reporter, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Next, Roskam went to the Palatine Township Republican Organization’s monthly meeting, billed as open to all. But organizers shut out the general public because of intense interest. With hundreds of protesters massed outside, Roskam left through a back door. Some people chased on foot after his fleeing car.

They [town hall meetings] certainly aren’t productive for Roskam and his fellow Republicans — not now, anyway. An early backlash against the Trump presidency has led to many verbal confrontations between Republican lawmakers and the citizenry. President Trump’s face plant since the inauguration — most recently the resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn over dealings with Russia — is only making matters worse.

As recent town-hall meetings of GOP Reps. Jason Chaffetz(Utah), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Gus Bilirakis (Fla.), Diane Black (Tenn.) and others turn into well-publicized tongue lashings, their colleagues are ducking and running.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) canceled a constituent event in Southampton Village scheduled for April; his office told the Southampton Press they feared he would be harassed again by those who rallied at his recent appearance at a Rotary Club.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) was caught on video slipping out of his own community event last month before its scheduled ending time.

The scene is reminiscent of the tea party summer of 2009, but the energy is on the other side this time. Now, as then, the victims say the perpetrators are outsiders — Chaffetz said those who protested him included “paid” people from out of state, . . .

Trump has become increasingly toxic, with Flynn’s resignation and other Russia revelations, the travel ban struck down in court, chaos involving Obamacare, attacks on the federal judiciary and a series of bizarre pronouncements on everything from Ivanka Trump’s fashion line to Frederick Douglass. The Post’s Sean Sullivan and Ed O’Keefe found Republican members of Congress increasingly wary of defending Trump. “You can’t make it up,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said after Trump was seen in Facebook photos making sensitive national security decisions in his Mar-a-Lago Club’s main dining area.

Trump canceled an event in Milwaukee because his would-be host, Harley-Davidson, feared protests. The White House just canceled a visit to Ohio that had been scheduled for Thursday; no reason was given, but protests had been planned.

With few exceptions, these Republicans put partisanship over the good of the nation and backed a man who was utterly unfit for the White House - something now on growing display.  The day is approaching when this betrayal of the nation will no longer be able to be escaped.  One silver lining is the fact that the leading Christofascists have tied themselves to Trump.  When he crashes and burns - and is impeached or goes to prison or worse for treason - the "godly folk" will be unable to escape the fallout.  The 81% of evangelicals who supported Trump will fully deserve to become social and political lepers. 

Quote of the Day: Is Trump Mentally Ill?

I have mixed feelings about conservative pundits and columnists who for years happily acted as apologists for some of the ugliest memes spread by the GOP and who in their own way assisted in allowing the alternate universe of Fox News and Breitbart to go largely unchallenged.  Now, some of them are belatedly issuing clarion calls about the dangers to America and the world by Der Trumpenführer and Republicans only too willing to go along with his insanity.  Jennifer Rublin is a case in point.  For far too long she closed her eyes to the embrace of ignorance and racism that increasing motivated much of the GOP base and found a leader in Trump and in many ways, the equally scary Mike Pence. In a column in the Washington Post Rubin calls it like it is - too bad she didn't start speaking out this forcefully eight or nine years ago.  Perhaps better late than never is the rule that applies, but what damage now being done to the nation could have been avoided if party had not been placed above country for so long.  Here are column highlights:

Trump’s unprecedented degree of out-and-out lying to the American people about things large (a conspiracy to cover up terrorist attacks) and small (crowd size) — especially stated in the presence of the intelligence community (as he did at CIA headquarters the day after his disappointing inauguration turnout) and the military — raises the legitimate concern that we cannot rely on the president’s words or assume his perceptions are accurate.  The military and intelligence officers listening to his rants know he babbles nonsense. They surely are entitled to doubt the mental stability and trustworthiness of the commander in chief.

Consider what else Trump might think is true: Our borders are open. Mexico will pay us back for the wall. Tariffs will hurt China, not the American consumer. The Russian government is no worse than the United States when it comes to human rights and international conduct. In other words, much of Trump’s world view — we’re losing, our allies are stealing us blind — and the policies he pursues are based on nothing but his imagination and urban myths fanned by right-wing talk radio. Far too many Republicans have played along, reticent to call out his reverence for Russian President Vladimir Putin, silent when his plan for a wall on our Southern border started a war of words with Mexico and utterly unwilling to confront him on the noxious travel ban.

More is needed however from Republicans, Cabinet officials, Democrats, conservatives outside government and the public. Trump’s dangerous delusions need to be addressed head on — in part to determine if he is intentionally stoking fear or if he is intellectually and emotionally unfit.

I would argue that Trump has more than demonstrated that he is mentally unfit.  He needs to be removed from office NOW.

The GOP Didn't Care About Russia's Effort to Derail Democracy

Tomorrow the Electoral College will vote and, short of a miracle, instead of protecting the nation from a dangerous and unqualified demagogue as intended by the Founding Father, it will probably certify Donald Trump's election and send America down the road to the death of democracy.  All empires end over time and often their demise comes from both forces inside and outside of their border (News bulletin to Christofascists: Christianity, not homosexuality, played a major role in the fall of the western Roman Empire).  Such will be the death of the American republic, with the outside forces being Putin's Russia and the inside forces being the angry whites who backed a demagogic authoritarian and destroy the country rather than lose their white privilege, the only thing that much of the white trash element (not all of whom are economically desperate) has had to allow itself to feel superior.  What is most frightening is that the GOP, the Republican Party, that political got the nation through the cataclysm of the Civil War, cared nothing about the Russian intervention.  Yes, there will be huffing and puffing and posturing, and much pretense of patriotism, but when it mattered, the GOP cared only about winning. A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at this sickening reality:  

The [Obama] administration did a huge amount over the course of the fall to alert the public, alert the world was happening. They finally went so far as to issue a public consensus judgment of the entire US intelligence community about Russian tampering in the election.

This was loud. Everybody heard about it. It was widely reported. It certainly didn't get the same volume or intensity of attention as Hillary Clinton's emails. But the President can't control press coverage. The key issue was that political partisanship by and large kept Republicans from caring. The dynamics of the presidential contest were more important than foreign meddling or sabotage.

This may sound like a harsh judgment but it is demonstrably true. Not only did President-Elect Trump know about the charges. (Indeed, it is very likely his intelligence briefings included more detailed information than we in the public have even today.) He frequently discussed them and encouraged the tampering.

Yesterday, Monica Crowley, another typically Trumpian Fox News extremist, got an appointment to the Trump National Security Council. Soon enough someone found a Tweet in which she either joked about or encouraged (depends on your interpretation) Putin getting more documents to unearth about the Clinton campaign.

One of the weirdest things about the entire cycle was that Wikileaks went from being the scourge of GOP national security hawks and the national security establishment to being the toast of American conservatives.

Perhaps you have doubts about whether Russia was really behind the hacks. But the US government made abundantly clear who it believed was behind them. The notifications went far beyond leaks or interviews. They did a public and formal pronouncement! That almost never happens. The simple matter is this: Everybody knew this. But there was no making Trump, his supporters or most critically establishment Republicans or elected officials care.

Trump supporters, GOP elites, a substantial portion of the US electorate simply didn't care about what Russia was doing because they believed it hurt Hillary Clinton.

Having said all this, it is important to repeat what I think was also clear at the time. The vast majority, I would say basically all of what the Russians found, was pedestrian and inconsequential. I would say that it had a small to marginal effect on the outcome. But it was an extremely close election that can be enough to make the difference. Can you imagine the emails within the RNC as Trump went from being the scourge and mortal enemy to man of destiny? But having close to all of one side's private communication dribbled out into the public realm and fluffed up by a credulous press was obviously damaging.

Let's not make fools of ourselves again. For most of the Fall the US government was on the record about who was behind the disruption campaign. It was discussed widely in the press. The vast majority of Republicans simply didn't care.

Some will not like it, but in my mind, being a Trump supporter and a Republican is now more or less synonymous with being a traitor guilty of undermining the U.S. Constitution.  The vast majority of Americans who did not vote for Trump need to begin treating Trump voters accordingly.