Tuesday, October 11, 2016

GOP Falling into Anarchy Over Trump


I have long thought that the only way to reform today's Republican Party is to kill it.  The cancer of the Christofascists, white supremacists and other ugly elements of the party base has simply to long metastasized for there to be any other cure.  One of the things that continues to drive me to distraction is the media's continued labeling of Trump's base of support as "the conservative base."  These people are not true conservatives.  They are anarchists, fascists and hate-filled bigots. To these vile people, if one is not a white, heterosexual, right wing Christian, not only are you deemed as unworthy of equal rights, but you are viewed as less than human.  The GOP needs to either split, leaving these ugly elements to form their own minority party, or simply die, because they are noting short of toxic and will continue to drive decent people away from the GOP.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the raging anarchy and intra-party civil war.  Here are excerpts:
The Republican Party tumbled toward anarchy Monday over its presidential nominee, as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) cut Donald Trump loose in an emergency maneuver to preserve the party’s endangered congressional majorities.
Ryan’s announcement that he would no longer defend or campaign with Trump prompted biting condemnations from within his caucus and from Trump himself, who publicly lashed out at the speaker.
It was an extraordinary display of personal animus just four weeks before the election, destroying any semblance of party unity behind a nominee who many GOP leaders said they could no longer stomach because of his character traits and tawdry campaign tactics.
New national and battleground-state polls showed Trump sliding since Friday’s publication of a 2005 video of him bragging about sexual assault, putting Clinton in position for a possible electoral landslide. Clinton surged to an 11 percentage point lead nationally in an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll conducted over the weekend.
“It’s every person for himself or herself right now,” former senator Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) said. “The nominee for president is so destructive to everyday Republicans.”
With Republicans at war amongst themselves, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton moved swiftly Monday to pry away moderate Republican-leaning voters who are turned off by Trump. Her campaign launched an advertising blitz featuring testimonials from ordinary Republicans explaining why they were voting for Clinton.
She is reaching out to voters that may well have supported Mitt Romney in 2012 and in a normal year might also be inclined to support the Republican nominee but are so troubled by Donald Trump they are open to supporting Hillary Clinton,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said. He added that nasty personal attacks by Trump at Sunday’s second presidential debate in St. Louis“only helped us close the sale.”
Ryan’s move, announced on a contentious conference call with House GOP members, was seen as a concession that Trump could no longer win the presidency and that the party must devote itself to retaining its majorities in the House and Senate.
Democrats insisted that Trump’s lewd comments and description of predatory behavior in the video would haunt him for the remainder of the campaign.
“It’s not behind him,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “No. I guarantee you. Women do not forget being talked about that way, because all women have had a man in their life who has been in a position of power that has treated them without respect.”
Many Republican elected officials felt paralyzed Monday, disgusted with Trump’s candidacy but afraid to withdraw their endorsements and feel the wrath of his supporters. The situation was most precarious for politicians in battleground states such as Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, who can save their seats only if they get votes from the most fervent Trump supporters as well as moderates uneasy about him.
Trump is exacerbating the tensions by rebuking any Republican who betrays him and using the party leadership as a foil. Trump tweeted on Sunday: “So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers — and elections — go down!”
Trump’s high command is keeping track of Republicans who break from the nominee. As he climbed into a waiting SUV late Sunday in St. Louis with other Trump advisers, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani coolly said that Trump “will remember” who was with him and who was not . . . .
Trump’s blistering method is being orchestrated by Stephen K. Bannon, the campaign’s chief executive and former head of the acerbic conservative website Breitbart, who has become a near-omnipresent counselor at Trump’s side. He has urged Trump not to worry about any cleavage in party ranks and instead to target Clinton. 
The choice before Republicans is Trump on the one hand and morality and decency on the other. Tellingly, the Christofascist leadership has chosen Trump.  Need I say more about them?  As for Paul Ryan, the man remains morally bankrupt and only looks better whrn compared to Trump himself.

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