Will Trump Dump Pence in a Last-Minute Game Changer Attempt?

Is Pence about to be thrown under the bus?

I dislike Mike Pence just as much as I dislike Donald Trump.  Indeed, in some ways Pence may be the more despicable of the two since, unlike Trump, he can't plead mental health issues as the cause of his lack of morals and sky high hypocrisy.  Faced with a likely loss if he had run for reelection as governor of Indiana, Pence sold his soul to Trump for two reasons: (i) joining the Trump ticket gave him a plausible reason to not seek reelection and an embarrassing loss, and (ii) it played to Pence's delusional belief that god wants him to be president. Having sold his soul, Pence has participated in every horror Trump has unleashed on the nation, including the disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic. With Trump seemingly increasingly desperate as poll after poll suggests he will lose to Joe Biden in November, he needs something to change the conversation if you will.  Dumping Pence and selecting a new VP candidate for the 2020 ticket might be something Trump might grasp at.  Should that happen, the irony would be that the self-loathing, seemingly closeted Pence would have sold his soul for nothing long term.  That prospect is delicious to contemplate.  Trump's big problem will be finding someone as willing as Pence to sell their soul and face the possibility of being on a ticket that goes down to a horrific defeat.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at this possibility.  Here are highlights:

On two previous occasions I have addressed and dismissed rumors that [Trump] the president wanted to dump his intensely loyal vice-president, Mike Pence, before voters go to the polls this year. In November 2018, we heard reports that Trump was having his own misgivings about the stolid veep. In August 2019, the person incessantly mentioned to be a possible replacement for Pence, former South Carolina Governor and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, conspicuously pledged her allegiance to Trump-Pence 2020, making it certain that everyone heard the rumors she denied.

On both occasions I figured that Pence was just too valuable to Trump as his ambassador to white conservative evangelicals to be discarded, despite some reports that Trump thinks he has forged sufficient bonds with that constituency to no longer need help.

So what might have altered that calculation in the last year? Two things: First, Trump is in very serious danger of not being reelected. He needs a game-changer to reset the race, and a fresh veep is a time-honored way to do that, even if it involves (to quote the words said to John McCain in 2008 about choosing Sarah Palin ) “high risk [and potentially] high reward.” Indeed, if, like Trump, you have no real second-term agenda to tout and no capacity to “pivot to the center” and pursue swing voters via messaging or policies, it’s one of the few cards in the deck.

In a podcast at FiveThirtyEight in which Nate Silver, Claire Malone, and Perry Bacon Jr. batted around various emergency steps Team Trump could take to turn it all around, a switch in running-mates was the one that made the most sense to them.

Second, Trump could perhaps try to blame Pence for his administration’s deadliest and most politically damaging error, its mishandling of COVID-19 from the get-go. The veep is, after all, the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, even though he has consistently given up the spotlight to Trump and to public health advisers like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. In an administration with constant personnel changes and little sense of reciprocal loyalty, it wouldn’t be that out of the ordinary for the Sycophant-in-Chief to be asked to step aside as one last act of service to the Warrior-King: taking the fall for a public health disaster.

In the FiveThirtyEight discussion, Haley was regarded as the most likely Pence replacement. As a woman of color who took down her state’s Confederate flags, she could obviously help address the perception that the president’s reelection effort is one long exercise in white male reactionary culture war politics.

Another name you occasionally hear as a substitute veep is Haley’s own 2016 candidate, Marco Rubio, a Latino pol whose presence on the ticket could arguably be worth a couple of points in must-win Florida. Like Haley’s, his positions on cultural issues would minimize conservative evangelical heartburn over Pence’s defenestration. If and when the trap door drops on the Hoosier incumbent, all sort of possibilities might open up.

A final reason it could actually happen now is the strong possibility that the Republican convention in Charlotte and Jacksonville will turn out to be a logistical and public health fiasco. The GOP will need some counter-programming to distract media from the mess, and an unexpected ticket is probably the most newsworthy thing Trump can offer. He would, however, have a lot of Trump-Pence posters and merch to liquidate.

If Pence gets dumped, it could not happen to a more self-prostituting hypocrite than Pence.  Keep your fingers crossed.

A Challenger to Republicans

As a former Republican activist and eight year Republican party city committee member - I even incorporated the Republican Party of the City of Virginia Beach, something the SCC records confirm - I continue to be shocked by the self-prostitution to Donald Trump that has been a party wide phenomenon in the GOP.  Trump's blatant dishonesty, hie rejection of science and  knowledge, and his public embrace of white supremacists and Christian extremists are anathema to what the Republican Party once claimed to stand for.  And I say this as one who grew up in a Republican family.  Were they still living, my parents and grandparents would be appalled at what the GOP has become and the horrid individual to whom so many - likely the majority - to whom both Republican elected officials and rank and file party members have sold their souls to. Decency, morality and any sense of supporting the rule of laws has been jettisoned by today;s Republicans,  And for what?  Merely staying in office and the associated perks have become the be all and end all for Republicans,  A column in the Washington Post throws out a challenge - a gauntlet, if you will - to those in the GOP who have sold their souls to Trump.  Here are highlights:

Republican senators, you know he is a danger to the republic. It is not too late to say so. It is not too late to help save your country, and maybe your self-respect.

You know it is wrong for a president to be spreading vile fictions about the death of a young woman 19 years ago. You know it is corrosive when he lies, and lies, and lies. And you know it is contemptible when a president, with his nation on edge as civil unrest spreads, can do nothing but threaten, divide and incite.How do I know you know? Because nothing in your careers, before the age of Donald Trump, hints at a willingness to tolerate such odious behavior.

Yes, I’m talking to you, Lamar Alexander. And you, John Barrasso. And Roy Blunt. Richard Burr. Susan Collins. Mike Crapo. Joni Ernst. Cory Gardner. Chuck Grassley. Mike Lee. Lisa Murkowski. Rob Portman. Jim Risch. Pat Roberts. Marco Rubio. Ben Sasse. Tim Scott. Dan Sullivan. John Thune. Roger Wicker.

And others in your caucus, too. Even you, Lindsey Graham. Even for you, it’s not too late.

Five years ago, could any of you have imagined excusing a leader who praised white supremacists, called his former opponent a criminal and a “skank,” mocked the weight and appearance of your fellow leaders?

Could you have imagined tolerating a president who sought to bend law enforcement, diplomacy and intelligence collection to his personal needs and whims?

You know, you all know, that he has imperiled the country and cost thousands of lives with his contempt for science and expertise.

Many of you have championed funding for the National Institutes of Health. Could you have imagined, five years ago, biting your tongue when a president told a country in peril that a virus would “magically” disappear? Would you have endorsed dangerous nostrums or mocked sound public health advice?

You know that he has eroded what turns out to be the surprisingly fragile system of checks and balances laid out in the Constitution that you have sworn to support and defend. Five years ago, you would not have tolerated a president spending money that Congress — your Article I branch — had explicitly decided not to spend, or shrugging off any attempt at congressional oversight, or firing inspectors general at will.

You know that he has dangerously eroded the United States’ security and standing in the world with his impulsiveness, his contempt for allies, his trashing of core American values and his naive embrace of America’s foes.

How do I know you know? Because many of you have spent your careers defending those values, building the institutions that undergird them, cultivating relationships across oceans. You shuddered when he trusted Russia’s leader over our own intelligence community, when he hailed the boss of the Chinese Communist Party as “a good man” and “a very, very good friend,” when he “fell in love” with the criminal strongman of Communist North Korea. Before the age of Trump, you could not have imagined staying silent in the face of such abominations.

So why do you stay silent now? Why does your colleague Mitt Romney seem so lonely in maintaining his moral compass?

It’s not hard to guess. You see your former colleagues Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, cast into political irrelevance for raising the most timid of objections. You think, better to stay viable. Keep your head down, don’t provoke the bully, and you can help restore sanity when he is gone.

But if he is reelected, restoring sanity may not be an option. The republic will be forever altered, as you know.

And you know this, too: Joe Biden would be a better choice for the country, at this moment. Of course, you disagree with many of his policies. You dislike some of the people he would bring into government. But he would respect the Constitution, the rule of law, simple human decency and the norms that have kept this experiment alive.

So why not hang together, announce you are voting for Biden, and help save your country? Explain that the president has left you no other honorable choice. You can still campaign for a Republican majority in the Senate to act as a check on a Democratic administration and its judicial picks. At best, you might help save your party and rescue your country.

At worst, you would meet the fate of Corker and Flake. That may seem unbearable to you. But if Trump is reelected, history will remember them far more kindly than those who, silently or actively, were complicit in the degradation of our democracy.

Republican Impeachment Panic Sets In

Being of an age where I vividly recall the Watergate hearings of the 1970's, it is easy to compare the impeachment buzz of that era to that which is unfolding now with Trump's more or less acknowledged improper efforts to bribe Ukraine to do his personal politically motivated smear effort.  In the 1970's, the Republican Party still contained many honorable individuals who put country over political party.  Fast forward to today where the GOP has sold its soul and now focuses almost exclusively on pandering to the party white supremacist/evangelical extremist base while engaging in political fellatio to Trump. While increasing GOP panic appears to be setting in and increasingly disingenuous lies and ploys are being wielded to try to protect Trump, one still wonders if at some point a tipping point will be reached where self-interest will finally push Republicans to throw Trump overboard. A column in New York Magazine looks at the speculation and growing GOP panic.  Here are excerpts:

Congressional testimony this week by William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine, laid out an explicit quid pro quo linking U.S. military aid for Ukraine to a Biden investigation, and detailing the rogue “diplomacy” driven by Rudy Giuliani. Is this the “smoking gun” Democrats have been waiting for?

When Richard Nixon finally was forced to concede in August 1974, that a 1972 White House tape implicated him in the Watergate cover-up, the conservative columnist George F. Will called the revelation a “smoking howitzer.” Nixon was gone four days later. Some have been recycling Will’s locution this week, with good reason given the damning evidence provided by Taylor and so many others (including Trump himself) that the president of the United States committed an unambiguous criminal act. But Trump isn’t going anywhere so fast.

Yet over the past week there have been repeated signs that he and his party are more panicked than ever. The first indication of desperation was the White House trashing of Taylor, a Vietnam combat veteran with a bipartisan 30-year-plus career in public service, as a “radical unelected bureaucrat” and “human scum” despite the fact that it was Trump’s own secretary of State and Ukraine shakedown co-conspirator, Mike Pompeo, who put Taylor in his current diplomatic post. Then came the farcical and failed effort of a congressional flash mob, approved by the president, to physically disrupt the impeachment inquiry on the spurious grounds that Republicans are being shut out of the proceedings. (Forty-eight GOP representatives are permitted to attend the hearings on impeachment.) These protesting clowns, among them the racist Iowa congressman Steve King, not only violated national security by bringing cell phones into the room but thought it was a hilarious idea to order in pizza to further dramatize their ostensibly serious act of civil disobedience.

Another sign of Trump panic was his reversal of his decision to host the G7 at his own Miami hotel — a very rare about-face, prompted by complaining GOP congressmen fearful of 2020 blowback in their own reelection campaigns. You’ll notice, too, that Trump seems to be retreating from his claim to be a “lynching” victim. This may have something to do with an unexpected editorial that ran Wednesday in Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal . . . the paper’s editorial page condemned Trump for using “self-indulgent” and “reckless” and “indefensible” language that exacerbates the “political trouble” he’s in.

Now comes the pièce de résistance, reported yesterday: In response to congressional Republicans’ complaints that the White House has no coordinated impeachment battle plan, Mick Mulvaney has been tasked with “working on getting a messaging team together.” To put Mick (“Who do you believe, me or your own ears?”) Mulvaney in charge of White House messaging can only mean that either that Trump can no longer recruit new political operatives to join him in his bunker or that Baghdad Bob was not available.

As new polling puts national support for an impeachment inquiry at an all-time high, Republicans who had previously been staunch Trump defenders are showing signs of indecision. Are we seeing cracks in the wall of Trump’s GOP support?

At the moment, polling averages show that Americans support impeachment by a plurality of roughly 49 to 43 percent. For a little perspective, the authoritative Harris Poll of the Nixon era found a similar 49 to 41 percent split in May of 1974. By a July 17, 1974, Harris survey, the pro-impeachment percentage had risen to 53 percent, with only 34 percent opposed. . . . . It took another two weeks for Nixon’s GOP support in the Capitol to collapse, prompting his August 9 resignation before the House conducted a full impeachment vote.

In the case of Trump, there’s no reason to expect that Senate Republicans will turn on him incrementally. Mitt Romney and retiring House members like Francis Rooney of Florida aside, they’ll mostly remain loyal — or in the case of Susan Collins and her Vichy ilk, in hiding — until the dam breaks. As to what might break the dam, it’s worth recalling the experience of H.R. Haldeman, the Nixon chief of staff who served 18 months in prison for Watergate crimes. In his 1978 memoir, The Ends of Power, he wrote: “The cover-up collapsed because it was doomed from the start. Morally and legally it was the wrong thing to do — so it should have failed. Tactically, too many people knew too much. Too many foolish risks were taken. Too little judgement was used at every stage to evaluate the potential risk vs. the gains. And when the crunch came, too many people decided to save their own skins at whatever cost to the president or anyone else.”

Just one small but conspicuous sign of such a crunch: It’s not out of a newfound press-shyness that Giuliani has vanished from cable news and is lawyering up.

Another factor will be the public impeachment hearings that Republicans have been demanding. The concept of Be Careful for What You Wish For will be ratified once again when those hearings do arrive in as soon as three weeks.

The Humiliation of Lindsey Graham, a Trump Political Prostitute

Lindsey Graham - who willingly sold his soul.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then came Trump’s decision.

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

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

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

The Republican Art of Selling One's Soul

Image by Ben Wiseman.

Moral bankruptcy and a willingness to prostitute one's self in exchange for fleeting power are now hallmarks of today's Republican elected officials. Honor, honesty, and adherence to basic morality no longer matter.  And then there is the putrid party base that is consumed with racism, hatred of those they deem "other" and pushing a hideous form of Christianity that flushes Christ's gospel message down the toilet.  As a former Republican, I continue to be dismayed at how many one time political colleagues have sold their souls and are making a mockery of the values they once claimed to uphold.  A column in the New York Times looks at some prominent Republicans - Mike Pompeo, an supposed evangelical Christian, in particular - who embody this total moral rot that has consumed the GOP.  Here are column excerpts:

There’s no way that Mike Pompeo actually venerates Donald Trump. I doubt he even likes the president much.

Pompeo graduated first in his class at West Point decades ago, a feat that suggests enormous reserves of discipline, a profound respect for tradition and a talent for self-effacement when the circumstances warrant it. Trump possesses none of those qualities.

Pompeo is an evangelical Christian, steeped in the very dictums that Trump has spent a lifetime mocking with both his words and his deeds. And Pompeo has long believed in the importance of American military intervention abroad, the kind of activist role that Trump railed against during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

In fact Pompeo, who was then a congressman from Kansas, supported Marco Rubio — and publicly praised him, while disparaging Trump . . . . he sounded an alarm that Trump would be “an authoritarian president who ignored our Constitution.” He urged Republicans to come to their senses and resist the lure of the surging Trump campaign. “It’s time,” he said, “to turn down the lights on the circus.”

But the lights continued to burn bright, so Pompeo just put on a clown suit, put away his ethics and finagled a big role under the Big Top.

He had plenty of company in that transformation. It’s the wonder of the Trump era and one of the saddest, scariest themes of the impeachment inquiry so far: the teeming crowd of sellouts and suck-ups who eagerly traded principle for position and are in some cases doubling and tripling down on that transaction, to a point where it’s fair to ask if there was ever much principle to begin with.

I’m looking at you, Lindsey Graham, who somehow decided that Trump was the new John McCain, which is like deeming tripe the new tenderloin. Hell, I’m looking at most of the Republicans in the Senate.

Pompeo, who first signed on as Trump’s C.I.A. director and then flattered his way to secretary of state, is a paragon of these lackeys-come-lately, and he’s especially vivid proof of how easily and completely the lure of power can overwhelm any call to conscience.

Pompeo had a heady shot at a vaunted job that almost surely wasn’t going to come his way any other time. So he lunged for it, then demonstrated with his obsequiousness that doing good and doing right were never high on the agenda.

He wrote an op-ed article that essentially broke with his fellow Republicans to promote Trump’s view that Saudi Arabia’s butchery of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi shouldn’t give anyone pause. What are a few severed body parts among allies?

He listened mutely to that July 25 phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, decided to ignore what he heard and then claimed — until a few days ago — that he was utterly in the dark about any pressure on Ukraine to kneecap Joe Biden.

Had he spoken up or pushed back, he would have risked ending up on the outside, among the swelling Trump administration diaspora. He preferred the inside, with its glossier trappings and cushier thrones. . . . Better to be a wretched part of history than no part at all.

The tale sounds familiar because it is. It’s the story of Faust, who sold his soul for renown, then endured the ugliness of that deal. It’s also the story of too many of Trump’s Republican enablers to count.

Few people remember anymore, but just years before she became the dark empress of “alternative facts,” Kellyanne Conway was a respected, reasonably mainstream, uncontroversial Republican pollster and strategist. Just months before she joined Team Trump, she correctly labeled him “vulgar,” said that he wasn’t presidential, called him a liar and demanded his tax returns. Then he offered her the lofty job of managing his presidential campaign — and all the television airtime that came with it — and she turned herself into a kowtowing cartoon. She’ll never be seen the same way again. Was the ride really worth it?

[Lindsey] Graham was oddly and briefly honest about this in an interview with The Times’s Mark Leibovich, framing his kinship with Trump, whom he once called “the world’s biggest jackass,” as part of his career-long quest “to try to be relevant.” This quest now involves the insistence that Trump, rather than abusing the presidency to dig up imagined dirt on a political rival, is the victim of some setup.

You can hear Graham’s version as predictably loopy illogic from a senator up for re-election next year in the deep-red state of South Carolina, but it’s more than that. It’s the fee for being able to get the president on the phone, for being invited to play golf with him, for feeling the rush of access, for crowing about your perch at the epicenter of the action.

He and Pompeo will have insider anecdotes to last the rest of their lives. They’ll need just as long to convince themselves that they didn’t overpay.

Continued GOP Insanity: 82% of Trump Voters Still Support Him

Tuesday's fiasco at the polls for Republicans across the country, not just in Virginia, has caused some in the Republican Party to start having a debate that, in my view, should have begun 20 years ago, and which is all the more need with the toxic regime of Der Trumpenführer damaging the national fabric daily.  Yet a new poll indicated that 82% of Trump voters would vote for the man again despite the fact that he has passed none of the legislation he had promised and is sharply diminishing America's stature in the world.  As a post the other day indicated, the main motivation for these Trump supporters is their animus towards others - blacks, Hispanics, gays, non-Christians, etc., etc. Perhaps the only positive news is that, if one does the math, only 58% of registered voters voted in 2016 and Trump got roughly 47% of that vote which equates to 27.26% of voters.  Thus, more than 70% of Americans did NOT vote for the hate, bigotry and misogyny embodied by Trump.  A piece in Politico looks at these Trump supporters versus sane voters while another piece in Bearing Drift looks at  the mindset of "NeverTrump" Republicans who realize the GOP must change or begin what hopefully will be a precipitous road towards death.  First, highlights from Politico:

One year after the 2016 presidential election, the vast majority of Donald Trump voters have no regrets.

According to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted on the eve of the first anniversary of Trump's historic election, 82 percent of those who say they supported Trump last year would vote for him again if they had to do it over.

Trump’s supporters have largely rallied around the president, despite his poor overall approval ratings, the chaos of his first year in office and the ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

But there are worrying signs for Trump that voters are less inclined to give him a second term three years from now if he decides to run for reelection.

Those red flags go beyond the natural, downward trajectory of most new presidents. Like Trump, Barack Obama and George W. Bush saw their parties lose governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia the year after their first elections as president. But both Obama and Bush had job-approval ratings over 50 percent at this point.

Roughly twice as many Trump voters (16 percent) are undecided about whom they would support in 2020 as Clinton voters (7 percent), suggesting Trump's support is softer than it appears on the surface.

Similarly, 84 percent of Democratic voters would choose the Democratic candidate, but just 74 percent of GOP voters would back Trump, the poll shows. Nine percent of Democrats are undecided, compared with 17 percent of Republicans.

[A] CNN poll conducted by the firm SSRS, a remarkable 62 percent of registered voters said Trump does not deserve to be reelected in 2020. Only 35 percent of voters said he deserves reelection.
 In another ominous finding from the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, voters have questions about whether Trump will even complete his term in office. The Constitution sets the president's term into January 2021, but only a narrow majority of voters, 52 percent, think it’s likely that Trump completes his four-year term as president — 37 percent believe it’s more likely he will leave office early.
 The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll finds voters are split on whether they are better off financially now than they were a year ago when Trump was first elected. Just over a quarter, 26 percent, say they are better off now, but 28 percent say they are worse off. A 41 percent plurality say their financial situation is about the same as it was a year ago. . . . . The problem, again, for Trump: Just 23 percent of voters strongly approve of his job performance.

In the end, it is worth remembering that only because of the flawed Electoral College system that failed to protect America from an unfit president as contemplated by the Founding Fathers do we have  Der Trumpenführer in the White House.   The piece noted above in Bearing Drift suggests that more and more Republicans realize that Trump could be the death of the GOP brand.  Here are excerpts (the bold face is the author's):

We’re a few days removed from the recent unpleasantness, and we’re starting to see some narratives come together about what happened and why.

 Here is why this narrative from the President and Corey Stewart is weak bullshit:The idea that Gillespie didn’t embrace Trump enough and the result was Trump supporters stayed home is wrong.  What happened was Ed Gillespie broke the record for GOP turnout in a Governor’s race – his nearly 1.2 million votes in the election was more than any GOP governor candidate in history.  In fact, it was more than any successful gubernatorial candidate in Virginia history…other than Ralph Northam. 

Northam’s 1.4 million votes was unprecedented.  No statewide candidate in the history of Virginia has ever gotten that many votes in a non-presidential election.
 The Democrats deserve the credit they’ve earned – they finally cracked the code on how to beat the normal off-year election ennui that tends to infect their party.  All it takes is the most hated sitting president since Richard Nixon, coupled with a white supremacist murdering an innocent woman on hallowed Virginia ground in Charlottesville.
 When it comes down to it, many Republicans hate the Republican Party right now – either because they don’t like Trump or they don’t like the establishment, or they don’t like that we control everything in Washington and nothing is getting done.  That translates into people either leaving the party, or independents who tend to vote Republican not doing so to “send a message”.  You also have the fact that the entire Democratic party, from the middle to the far left, hates Trump so much they will crawl over broken glass to give him the finger, and if they can’t do that, they’ll give it to you and tell you to send him the message.
 Trump cost Republicans the large majority they’ve enjoyed in the House of Delegates for nearly a generation.  Candidates from across the entire political spectrum on the GOP side, from moderates to super conservatives, lost.
 [Y]ou can expect that any Republican held districts where Hillary outperformed Trump in 2016 are going to flip, if they haven’t already done so.  Statewide, it’s going to be extremely difficult for Republicans to win so long as Trump is as unpopular as he is.
 As for next year’s Senate race, if Corey Stewart wants it, I say let him have it.  Watching him get destroyed by the Democrats’ Pretty Hate Machine – which he helped build, thanks to his Confederate statues idiocy – will be almost as much fun to watch as Bob Marshall losing to a transgender woman.

What is most delicious is that the author is a former Northern Virginia GOP chairman.  Oh, and on those coming to Roy Moore's defense, the author tweeted this:

For those GOPers making those arguments, please look in a mirror and ask yourself if you'd be okay with a 32 year old man trying to "date" your daughter. And recognize that no, you wouldn't. At least, not if you've got a soul.

 I left the GOP years ago because I could not sell my soul to the forces of hate and extremism.  More and more Republicans will find themselves having to make the same choice I did.

GOP Insiders: Trump Can't Win

I know that one should not get cocky until after the election results are in, but as a former Republican who is disgusted with what the GOP has become, I can't help but take some glee in the panic and despair raking GOP insiders over what Donald Trump.    My favorite comment comes from an Iowa Republican: "'Trump is under performing so comprehensively...it would take video evidence of a smiling Hillary drowning a litter of puppies while terrorists surrounded her with chants of ‘Death to America’'"  Trump is the culmination of the GOP's selling of its soul to Christofascists, white supremacists, and other misogynists for the last several decades while seeking short term gain with no thought of the cancer they were injecting into the party long term.  Politico looks at the desperation that seems to be growing.  Here are excerpts:

Republican insiders are more convinced than Democrats that Donald Trump is so far behind Hillary Clinton that he can't win in November.
 Roughly half of Republican members of The POLITICO Caucus — activists, strategists and operatives in 11 swing states — believe that Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes is basically shut off after another week in which the GOP nominee appears to have ceded ground in national and most battleground state polls.

Democrats, however, aren’t breaking out the champagne just yet. Seventy-two percent of Democratic insiders said despite Clinton’s clear advantage at this stage of the race, the presidential election isn’t effectively over. . . “We are in a great place,” added a Florida Democrat, “but nothing is over 89 days out, particularly with Clinton's trust issues.”

GOP insiders were virtually split, however: 49 percent said the race was already effectively over, while 51 percent said that it wasn’t.

“While it's true that previous candidates have come back from greater deficits to win, it won't happen in 2016. The electorate is far more base-driven, with fewer persuadables,” said an Iowa Republican. “Trump is under performing so comprehensively across states and demographics it would take video evidence of a smiling Hillary drowning a litter of puppies while terrorists surrounded her with chants of ‘Death to America!’

“Trump has failed to demonstrate he has a plan and path to 270” electoral votes, added a Wisconsin Republican. “Considering the disadvantage a GOP candidate starts with, the work in key targeted states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania has to be error-free. There is no evidence that Trump has done that or that he has much of a ground game to begin with.”

Slightly fewer than half of Republican Caucus panelists, 47 percent, said Trump is right to suggest his participation could hinge on the dates, times, identities of the moderators and other details — while 53 percent said Trump is making a mistake by not committing to the debates without conditions.

“The old adage is you cannot win an election through debates, but you can lose them. Donald Trump, as with anything, is the exception to this rule,” said an Iowa Republican. “He has GOT to win the debates or he will lose. Forfeiture is not an option. Last time he skipped a debate, he lost the Iowa caucuses.”

Other Republicans agreed with the overwhelming majority of Democrats, 85 percent, who said threatening to hold out of the debates was a mistake. One Michigan Republican said Trump “looks petty and scared.” Two Florida insiders — one from each party — called the GOP nominee “chickens---t.”

Added an Iowa Republican: “Someone has failed to teach Trump the basics of candidate school. He doesn't understand that he's no longer negotiating with [RNC chair] Reince [Priebus] and a single cable network. This is an entirely different thing. And leaving an empty chair against Hillary would be a complete disaster. He would look weak and scared and like a loser, which he would never allow around his brand. It would literally put a wooden stake in the heart of his entire campaign.”

Spineless Republicans Cower Before Trump

Perhaps it was my family upbringing where it was stressed that doing the right thing was more important that popularity or choosing the easy, non-confrontational course of action, but it is disgusting to watch as supposedly decent Republicans - admittedly a dying breed - keep their silence and refuse to confront the hate and misogyny embodied by Donald Trump and to a lesser extent, Ted Cruz.  Years ago, I resigned from the GOP when it became clear to me that the party's conflation of religion and the civil laws was nothing short of unconstitutional. I stated this specifically in my resignation from the City Committee for the Republican Party of Virginia Beach.  In perhaps her harshest attack on spineless Republicans, Kathleen Parker lays out the cost of gutlessness and maintaining silence.  Most tellingly, she applies the word "fascist" to what Trump and the GOP apologists are doing.  Here are highlights from her column in the Washington Post:

You know all the arguments pro and con by now. He [Trump] speaks plainly. So did Archie Bunker. His message of walled-in isolationism appeals to those tired of loose immigration policies. So was the case with Sen. Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, the nativist demagogue in Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 cautionary novel, “It Can’t Happen Here.”

Windrip, like Trump, spoke of national greatness, though Windrip was more explicit, saying that Americans “must continue to be the greatest Race on the face of this old Earth.” Like Trump’s, Windrip’s base consisted largely of working-class white males, whom he called upon to help control dissent after he ascended to the Oval Office. Sound familiar? Punch anybody in the nose lately?

It’s called fascism by any other name and, yes, it does seem that it can happen here. That is, a demagogue can become president, as Lewis was trying to warn. And, yes, we do have checks and balances in this country, but does anyone really think that Trump should have the power to start a nuclear war? He’s mighty quick to rile.

No one is more familiar with the language of marginalization and authoritarianism than the Jewish community, causing one to wonder why Trump, whose rise has been spiced with bigotry and group-blaming rhetoric, was allowed in AIPAC’S door. The answer is that the nonpartisan organization traditionally invites all presidential candidates, among others, to speak to its annual policy conference.  Well, that’s an explanation, anyway.

The conundrum for Republicans is that though Trump may be the devil, he’s their devil. How can they condemn the guy that a near-majority of their own party prefers? If you’re, say, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), how do you say you won’t support your party’s nominee? Then again, if you’re a good man like Ryan, how do you support him?

That is the question of the moment, isn’t it? This is what we ask ourselves about the industrialists and “good Germans” who supported Hitler. This is what we ask our Southern grandparents about the time when blacks were being lynched. What we ask the World War II generation about rounding up Japanese Americans. And while we’re at it, what was your vote on Vietnam, Iraq? There’s a price to pay for silence.

That so few have shown the courage to deny Trump tells us how difficult it is to be brave — and how rare character is. But one can only pretend for so long not to hear the dog whistles of history, a skill at which Republicans have become too well practiced over the decades. Perhaps they’re no longer listening. Or they’re deluding themselves that Trump’s words don’t really mean what, you know, they mean.

“He won’t be that bad.”  No, he’s worse.

 [I]f you go back and look at Hitler, somehow you elect someone that you know is beyond the pale. But you do it because you’re afraid of someone else. And then later, you look closely. And it’s too late.”

The tiny flame at the end of this darkening tunnel is a contested convention, which depends on Ted Cruz and John Kasich starving Trump of the necessary 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination. It could happen . . . . if Kasich campaigns only in proportional delegate states, leaving winner-take-all states to Cruz, Trump’s chances of becoming the nominee are reduced from 90 percent to 50 percent,says Wang.  It’s a big gamble, but it beats losing your soul.

Trump Was Created By the GOP Establishment

Paul Krugman has a column in today's New York Times that looks at an issue I often address, perhaps because I am a former Republican who believes that the party did not have to turn into something insane and ugly.  That transformation was made through the conscious efforts of the so-called party establishment and party leaders who put short term electoral wins ahead of decency and responsible leadership.   Appeals to racism became more and more open and once the Christofascists were welcomed into the party, the base became overrun with those proudly out of touch with objective reality and consumed with judging others and seeking special rights for themselves.  Now, as Krugman notes, the party establishment has lost control of the knuckle dragging elements they once welcomed into the party.  Donald trump has now beat the GOP establishment at its own game and made it clear that in pursuing his personal aggrandizement, he  is only too willing to use the well spring of hate and rage so long nurtured by the party establishment. Decency and responsibility have now been thrown to the wind.  Here are column excerpts:

Establishment Republicans who are horrified by the rise of Donald Trump might want to take a minute to remember the glitch heard round the world — the talking point Marco Rubio couldn’t stop repeating in a crucial debate, exposing him to devastating ridicule and sending his campaign into a death spiral.

It went like this: “Let’s dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.” The clear, if ungrammatical, implication was that all the bad things Republicans claim have happened under President Obama — in particular, America’s allegedly reduced stature in the world — are the result of a deliberate effort to weaken the nation.

In other words, the establishment favorite for the G.O.P. nomination, the man Time magazine once put on its cover with the headline “The Republican Savior,” was deliberately channeling the paranoid style in American politics. He was suggesting, albeit coyly, that a sitting president is a traitor.

And now the establishment is shocked to see a candidate who basically plays the same game, but without the coyness, the overwhelming front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. Why?

The truth is that the road to Trumpism began long ago, when movement conservatives — ideological warriors of the right — took over the G.O.P. And it really was a complete takeover. Nobody seeking a career within the party dares to question any aspect of the dominating ideology, for fear of facing not just primary challenges but excommunication.

You can see the continuing power of the orthodoxy in the way all of the surviving contenders for the Republican nomination, Mr. Trump included, have dutifully proposed huge tax cuts for the wealthy, even though a large majority of voters, including many Republicans, want to see taxes on the rich increased instead.

But how does a party in thrall to a basically unpopular ideology — or at any rate an ideology voters would dislike if they knew more about it — win elections? Obfuscation helps. But demagogy and appeals to tribalism help more. Racial dog whistles and suggestions that Democrats are un-American if not active traitors aren’t things that happen now and then, they’re an integral part of Republican political strategy. Establishment Republicans generally avoided saying in so many words that the president was a Kenyan Islamic atheist socialist friend of terrorists — although as the quote from Mr. Rubio shows, they came pretty close — but they tacitly encouraged those who did, and accepted their endorsements. And now they’re paying the price. For the underlying assumption behind the establishment strategy was that voters could be fooled again and again: persuaded to vote Republican out of rage against Those People, then ignored after the election while the party pursued its true, plutocrat-friendly priorities. Now comes Mr. Trump, turning the dog whistles into fully audible shouting, and telling the base that it can have the bait without the switch. And the establishment is being destroyed by the monster it created. Things are very different on the other side of the aisle. . . . . The Democratic Party is, as some political scientists put it, a “coalition of social groups,” ranging from Planned Parenthood to teachers’ unions, rather than an ideological monolith; there’s nothing comparable to the array of institutions that enforces purity on the other side. But back to the Republicans: Let’s dispel with this fiction that the Trump phenomenon represents some kind of unpredictable intrusion into the normal course of Republican politics. On the contrary, the G.O.P. has spent decades encouraging and exploiting the very rage that is now carrying Mr. Trump to the nomination. That rage was bound to spin out of the establishment’s control sooner or later.  Donald Trump is not an accident. His party had it coming.

Is the GOP Establishment About to Sell its Soul to Trump?

First the Republican Party establishment sold its soul to white racists and segregationists with Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" - a strategy still in full play today.  Next, it sold its soul to the Christofascists who comprise the Christian Taliban and now Republicans work to subvert the U.S. Constitution by granting special rights to Christian extremists under the smoke screen of "religious liberty."  Now, the degradation of the GOP establishment is on the precipice of being complete as more and more of its members are poised to embrace Donald Trump and his demagoguery and fascist leanings.  With each of these sellouts, sane and rational people have fled the GOP.  A few are shouting out "enough is enough" as evidenced by a column by Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post.  Here are column excerpts: 

As Donald Trump continues to surge forward as the most-likely Republican nominee, perfectly sane people are beginning to wonder: “Was there something we missed? Maybe he’s not really so bad.”

Shed that self-doubt and purge the thought. You’re not wrong — and he’s that bad. Just ask the Breitbart reporter who was roughed up at a recent Trump rally. And she’s one of the “good” people. Imagine what happens to his critics once a Trump presidency takes shape.

Nothing makes Trump more acceptable today than yesterday or last week — or six months ago. He is still a boastful, volatile, misogynistic, race-baiting, willfully and strategically ignorant, exploitative fear-monger who is guided by profit over principle and whose hair-trigger temperament has the world on edge.

Never mind that he has begun softening his tone or walking back some of his more radical statements. Seeking redemption through press release, he now says he wouldn’t order the military to hunt down and kill the families of terrorists. . . . But he did think and say such a thing. 

That rational objections seem not to matter to a third of the Republican Party, including a swath of evangelicals, reflects our sadly degraded culture. . . . . We’re all trapped in one big sleazy reality show, no longer spectators but fellow actors with people we can’t stand.

Nevertheless, politicians are beginning to pivot toward Trump, despite having found him reprehensible five minutes earlier. . . . . Even the three other remaining GOP candidates have pledged to support the man they still find reprehensible.

The commentariat, too, is beginning to turn. You’ll notice a softening of criticism, a leaning toward the possible next president of the United States. Again, the bottom line in Washington is access — to the White House, the president and, hardly least, Palm Beach.

Whatever one hopes or wishes to believe about him, Trump is still terrible for the country and, therefore, the world. It should concern us that other nations are worried — and not in a good way. David Ignatius, The Post’s leading foreign affairs commentator, recently said that international leaders, including our allies, are cornering him to ask how the world might look under a President Trump.

To such concerns, Trump responds that he can be as presidential as anybody — whatever this means. 

Never believe anyone who says, “Believe me.

”

There has always been a balance among our nation’s governing institutions. No one was ever perfectly satisfied, but at least we had a sense that the country would remain fundamentally stable. Elsewhere, other nations could reasonably rely upon the United States to be a certain kind of country — not perfect but always striving toward a more perfect union.

With Trump at the helm, given his own vows and threats, this balance feels at risk. His so-called refreshing candor has the power to rock markets and collapse nations. His deal-making prowess notwithstanding, Trump would be a destabilizing force both here and abroad.

The only real strength of Trump’s candidacy has been to expose and shame the cowards and opportunists among us. Remember them.

The RNC Sells its Soul to Trump

The moral corruption and retreat from sanity and decency of the Republican Party began years ago and ironically traces, in my view, to the rise of the "godly folks" in the party base.  The Christofascists, as I call them, who are neither sane nor decent people.  Hate, bigotry and a world view based on myths and - as one blogger friend puts it - belief in an imaginary invisible friend are now what drives the GOP and demagogues like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the natural result of the party's throwing aside of logic, reason, and belief in science in favor of racism and superstition.  Now, even the RNC seems ready to put the final nails in the coffin of the party by signalling that it will sell itself to Trump and Trumpism.   A column in the Washington Post looks at this final surrender.  Here are excerpts:

Late Thursday night, National Review, the storied conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley, published an issue denouncing Donald Trump. . . . The Republican National Committee reacted swiftly — immediately revoking the permission it had given National Review to host a Republican presidential debate next month. 

That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump. Party elites — what’s left of the now-derided “establishment” — are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and of American conservatism. 

In recent days, influential Republicans including Bob Dole, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, Rupert Murdoch and, as my Post colleagues reported, Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) have made noises about being able to stomach Trump. Republican donors are trying to insinuate themselves in the billionaire’s orbit. 

The Wall Street Journal editorial page had long criticized Trump’s candidacy, publishing an editorial in July arguing that the conservative media who applaud Trump “are hurting the cause.” The editors opined: “If Donald Trump becomes the voice of conservatives, conservatism will implode along with him.”

A week ago, the Journal reversed course. “Mr. Trump is a better politician than we ever imagined, and he is becoming a better candidate,” the editorialists wrote, speculating that “he might possibly be able to appeal to a larger set of voters than he has so far.”

[H]ow do you un-ring all these bells? Trump has in word and deed built his candidacy by antagonizing Latinos and Muslims, immigrants and women, Jews and African Americans, Asian Americans and the disabled. And if he walked away from his vows to deport 11 million illegal immigrants and to block Muslims from coming into the United States, he’d abandon the source of his power: the rage of angry, less-educated white men.

[T]he only thing more likely to devastate the Republican Party and the conservative movement than a Trump wipeout in November would be a Trump victory. Either way, he’d cement the Republican Party’s long-term demographic problems and bind conservatism to bigotry and nativism.

 

This is why I wonder about the self-deception of those GOP elites now cozying up to Trump. . . . . If, in future years, Republicans and conservatives are called to explain how Trump happened, they might recall this: Good people could have stopped him, but they didn’t.

Once again we see the RNC looking for a current election cycle  victory with no thought to the long terms consequences.  This is how those who once would have been shunned and looked at as a form of contagion were welcomed into the GOP only to ultimately hijack the party. This is precisely how the GOP has come to be the party of insanity and hate.  The RNC and the so-called establishment have seemingly learned nothing.