Read your history. Fed. Gov't imposes income tax on Oligarchs. They hate it. FDR delivers New Deal. Oligarchs hate it. Johnson sets up Great Society. Oligarchs complain to each other. Lewis Powell, future supreme court justice, writes to oligarchs saying do something and proposes plan. GOP's, Ralph Reed, co-joins Christian Coalition and GOP. He uses grassroot evangelicals, copying Dems. They set up satellite network directly into churches. Churches are pre-voting centers where they feed voters, tell them who to vote for, and bus to polls. Reagan becomes first front man as president, an actor who can follow scripts written by the backroom organizers. Fed Gov't is the problem. Carter not a friend of the federal government. Bush Sr. nice but pliable. Clinton conservative and willing to make deals with Newt Gingrich that affects social programs and signs legislation to allow citizenship to Rupert Murdock who is willing to set-up and fund right wing propaganda machine. Bush Jr. takes orders from Cheney and Rumsfeld, the two who provided poisons to Saddam to get back at Iran's Imams for taking down the Shah, the US puppet. Obama proves that emotion can win an election even while being black. Comes now the the Trump crime family, never believing that they can win, spew every emotional hatred that is just below surface waiting to be freed for action. Dems with no simple message and weak grassroots. Result, see other letters herein.
The GOP has demonstrated time and again that it is populated entirely with cowards and opportunists. Now it has been compromised by the Kremlin. There is no reason to hope that it can restore itself to decency. No one needs the GOP. It should fail, utterly, and die out permanently.
20
The man won the Presidential election. Get over it already!
4
So much for fantasy. All the republicans can manage is a nodding head to special interests. To expect the party of callous cowards to do the right thing is like asking Trump not to lie.
10
When I quiz Trump fans about what keeps them strapped to him, I ask, doesn't his fraudulent business practices and cheating contractors bother you? No. What about his sexual predation? NOPE! And the daily servings of lying? Not a bit. When I ask about his infidelities against Melania, and the back-channel payoff to his lovers, I get a "so what" response.
For Republicans elected to office, they would not permit their own children to grow up like Trump. Yet they see him as a tool, and a fool. He hates to read so, when presenting with a bill to sign before the cameras, he can't articulate exactly what he is signing. But he loves the cameras too much to ask.
Along with Reagan's disgust for federal governance, one would have to pin much of the downward slide of the GOP on Newt Gingrich and his strategists like Frank Luntz who vilified anyone who disagreed with him. "Traitors." "Unpatriotic" he would declare. He built a cadre of like-minded politicians eager to accept congressional paychecks without having to do the work.
Trump is a con artist, which works well for a narcissistic opportunist. That is his talent: finding weakness in other and capitalizing on it. And as we watch the likes of Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, and Graham, it is like watching a slow train wreck.
Frankly, as a 74 year old liberal, I am hoping the Republican Party comes to its senses and become, once again, the loyal opposition ready to negotiate and debate the issues.
Oh, right. Fat chance of that.
24
Many are commenting about their dismay of others admiration for this buffoon.
It is quite simply called a cult of personality.
About a third of the masses are incredibly susceptible to this and have been so through out humanity's recorded history.
12
Anyone who believes Republicans will lift a finger to help us get out of this mess is delusional.
9
The Watergate tapes sank Nixon not by irrefutable evidence. The tapes recorded Nixon's own voice revealing what a despicable man he was.
This is already well-known about Trump
10
For tolerating the existence of the Orange Disaster, the Republicans have lost this gun-loving, nine-percenter forever. Their lack of judgement cannot be forgiven.
8
Good luck with all that.
3
Anyone who thinks senate republicans care a whit about democracy, decency, or even conservative values, is fundamentally deluded. They looked the other way while Putin installed the little dictoddler, they have gerrymandered important districts in a dire fight against democratic voting, and have done everything possible to assist in the obstruction of the special counsel's inquiry in to America's thrown elections in 2016. Even if republicans were to can trump because they can no longer absorb more of his radioactivity, they clearly do not believe in democratic representation. Get real gentlement. It's a party of fascists, thieves and big polluters. There is no redeeming these scoundrels.
9
The Republican party base is a cult of ignorant rubes. Their leader knows it and the rest of the party leadership know it and they are milking the system dry and when it collapses they'll take their money and go to live either in a gated community or possibly move to a country like Denmark that they disparaged during the election. Two more years with this lunatic at the helm may very well cause irreparable damage if that hasn't already happened.
11
The truly disturbing part is the high approval ratings Trump has from Republicans. In all seriousness, what is it about his unique combination of fascist ideals, childishly simple grasp of public policy, blatant sexism, vulgarity, and ever-shifting, wacko ideas that appeals to Republicans?
3
Pence is another Putin Puppet. The Republicans, who have shown they do not care about the USA, only care about power, need to be permanently removed from power.
5
The best explanation I have heard as to why this now failed president was elected, and whose ridiculous shenanigans and outrageous statements are now tolerated, was on Bill Maher's interview of Governor Christie last night. Christie stated that Trump was elected, and is now held to a lower level of public judgment by his 30% and the now repugnant party in general, is because of his fame as a TV personality. Nevertheless, this president is a criminal, Russian compromised, always lying, racist person (so many other adjectives also apply), that it is all bound to catch up with him. Currently, his supporters will find that they are paying more to the IRS to benefit the extremely rich.
6
Ronald Reagan once said that the time for the few to rule the many has ended. Thirty some odd years later, its daja-vu all over again.
1
You are delusional if you think Republicans are going to clean up any mess they make. They invented the idea of "externalizing" risk. They invented Heads I win, Tails you lose. They invented Trickle Down economics. They don't pay for anything. Rich people never clean up messes. That's for the little people.
5
Before you break out the champagne please study the Presidential election of 1972 and get back to me.
4
Impeaching and convicting Trump would be a blessing in disguise for Republicans.
2
Trump can never resign. Putin won't allow it.
3
Perhaps Trump is a symptom and not a cause.
The Republican Party has become the party of lies: about Climate Change, about voter fraud, about what they stand for vs. what they do. In this, they have been abetted by a Supreme Court that has shown a preference for cutesy-poo logic rather than the basic facts of their cases. Science, reason, right and wrong no longer appear to matter to the Republican Party. Certainly, finding ways to help more citizens live better lives is completely lost on the party.
Trump is a symptom of the underlying corruption of the Republican party. And of the sanctity of lies within that party.
Citizen's United, gutting voter rights, petrochemical support, banker protection, billionaire enrichment, and developing a hereditary class who control the wealth of the nation appear to be the true goals of the Republican Party. Trump represents the triumph of these goals.
Yes, Trump and his family, friends, and his appointed government functionaries would mostly be incarcerated in a lawful country. But they are the living symbols of what the Republican Party actually stands for.
The Republican Party party can no more get us out of this mess than pigs will help you out of a filthy sty.
8
Don't be afraid. Go ahead, mention Mitch McConnell by name.
8
The republican party deserves to die. We cannot let Trump and his fellow mobsters off scot-free. That would make a mockery of our criminal justice system, such as it is.
2
What’s most ominous to me is: what happens if Mueller has the goods on Trump, chapter and verse? If impeachment is obvious, will Trump lash out to his base that “this is all a fake news coup and they’re trying to steal your vote and your president!” How will the radical Infowars wing of his support react? When you have people at his rallies wearing T-shirts that say, “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat”, or “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants....T.Jefferson”, there is cause for great concern. GOP legislators have pandered to him in fear of his base. The 401K wing could care less about his radical incompetence as long as the stock market is rising. We all wait with bated breath to see what Mueller, and possibly Trump’s tax returns, reveal.
6
"..... they do have a parachute, one named Mike Pence". So we then have a man sitting in the oval office who wants to establish a theocracy. Be careful what you wish for.
4
"... the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency. It has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself."
Wow. Is this plagiarism from one of Jennifer Rubin's post on WaPo this week?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/08/when-if-ever-do-republicans-come-their-senses/?utm_term=.17ba8b84a77d
No, I don't see Republicans changing.
They stayed with the party after the Nixon crimes, after the Reagan crimes, after the Bush crimes under Reagan, after the Bush crimes with Cheney, and now, after Trump.
With known hypocritical liars and malfeasance actors like Gingrich, Hastert, McConnel et al...
Because there are NO consequences for crimes committed while they're in office. Penalties and hand slaps are just a cost of business. A blubbering plea for forgiveness and self proclaimed god 'n family privacy, badda bing, badda boom. All is magically forgiven and forgotten.
No, I don't see the Republican base changing.
This is who and what they like.
Winning at all costs. Lying, cheating, brutalizing and even killing as needed. Especially if done in Black 'n Brown lands.
Until it effects their pocket book, their paycheck, their bank account. Then, and only then, will you see some, some, push back.
Win at all costs to pwn the libs.
That is our current Republican Party and its voters.
Democratic's need to lance this festering pustule and cleanse the area. It will not take care of itself.
Then hopefully they can take a look at their own party and pop a few too. Our gov. is bought and owned by the 1% and it oligarch and plutocratic handlers.
Everything needs a good disinfectant.
4
This is all wrong. trump is no aberration from which the GOP can heal. He is the final expression of their years of racist dog-whistling in the service of kleptocracy. The GOP must be utterly destroyed if the country--indeed, given global warming, the world--is to survive.
5
good luck with the republicans doing anything constructive
2
I'll bet you a dinner that, if Trump loses the 2020 election, he will refuse to vacate the White House on January 20, 2021. He will claim -- without ANY evidence -- that it was the votes of illegal aliens which caused his opponent to get more votes than he did. And that 90% of Republicans, Fox News, Ann Coulter and Limbaugh will back him to the bitter end
3
What makes the authors think that the Republicans will get us out of this mess? The party itself is corrupt and Trump is merely a symptom. Someone recently said that a healthy Republican party would never have nominated him in the first place.
5
My problem is, force Trump out and we are left with Pence, totally a part of Religious Conservatives who I distrust after 30 plus years of hiding their true agenda. And even when they haven't hidden it, it is so against what I think this country stands for, pluralism that besides distrusting them I abhor them. Even if we aren't left with Pence, the hold these Christian Conservatives (aided by the super wealthy who also don't have the best interests of the country as a whole on their minds) have on the Republican Party is frankly frightening to anyone who is not Christian and RABIDLY conservative. The country in the hands of present day Republicanism is ludicrous.
3
Utter silliness. Two years ago, there were a few Republicans willing to stand up to Trump, but they're gone now. Today, every GOP functionary is a Trump clone.
3
This is a cogent analysis, but the only way it will turn into reality is for Republican leaders to go out and confront the Trumpian base directly and firmly and simultaneously take on Fox News and the other media maniacs who are funding...emotionally and intellectually...Trump and his captured minions.
As far as I can tell, the Republican leaders simply have neither the courage nor the skill to do any of this. They are not so much defeatists as simply defeated. They are all running for foxholes and trying to line them with (they foolishly hope) bulletproof individual wealth.
As Trump himself would tweet: Sad.
2
This is how it is going to happen: The Democrats nominate a clearly superior candidate who not only captures the votes of the independent voters, but also a significant portion of Republicans because s/he also addressees their concerns. S/he also talks to "Mr. Trump’s core base of rural, evangelical and “noncollege” supporters" as equals and not inferiors.
BTW, it was Will Rogers who said, "If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
1
Without Constitutional changes it’s a broken record with the next trump waiting in the wings.
2
There can be no doubt that Mr. Trump suffers from a serious malicious narcissistic personality Disorder (NPD) and does not have full control of his emotional reaction to anything affecting his image of himself.
That is why I stopped considering myself a Republican. If the Republican Party does not remove Trump, it will be seen as thinking of its own interests before the nation's. The Republicans will be out in the wilderness for years.
The GOP MUST remove Trump to prove that they place country before party.
HankSemperFi
3
I think it's wishful thinking that the "Republicans" will do anything besides what the Trump and Tea Party wants to do. Why are the Republicans not condemning acting Attorney General Whittaker's disgusting and embarrassing hearing yesterday. I think Mike Pence has told blatant lies about his relationship with Russia and he has been publicly kissing Trump's feet every chance he gets.
The article seems to suggest clemency as a good solution. I think the country should do whatever it takes to remove Trump and his family. Like Trump says he wants to keep all options on the table I think indicting Trump and his family should be seriously considered.
2
Americans used to say, "you can grow up and be just like the president"; the president is the model of morals and torch bearer of American values, which always included honesty, truth and trust as core values.
Would anyone with a daughter permit her to be alone with trump? Would anyone reading this actually hold up trump as a model for your children?
4
The biggest Mistake the US made after the assassination of Lincoln was not arresting and sentencing all former Confederate officers and confederate guerillas. Executions ought to have been widespread, if only for those whose actions had the effect of prolonging an losing battle or of instituting the original sin of withdrawal from the Union.
Soldiers might have escaped the Noose-the firing squad was -I have no idea why-considered too good for these men. There were women who were as guilty of treason as the men.
Numerous GOP members from Southern states insist that Arabs around the world cheered and clapped at the sight of the World Trade Center being demolished-not so. In fact, however, almost the entire Southern population south of the Mason Dixon line crowed and hooped and got happily drunk on the eve that Lincoln was assassinated.
Our main and worst enemies in the US have always been right here, at home, not in Germany, not in Arabia or in the Various Muslim states. Most muslims come to live here and become Americans-they have no desire to turn their abopted nation into a divided inferno. The vicious and angry desire to see America split and to see members of disliked localities hurt or killed seems to belong mostly to people living in some of our unreconstructed Southern states which , for their own reasons have never gotten over the burning of Atlanta or the stealing of some chickens by Union troops.
1
What I find deeply disheartening is that the majority of self-described Republicans continue to support Trump despite the thousands of lies; despite the obvious cronyism; despite the swamp his entire administration seems to be swimming in; despite the scandals, the porn stars, the hush money; despite the exploding deficit; despite the destruction of environmental protections, of national monuments and the inaction about climate change; despite his callous disregard for historical allies and his shameless pandering to vicious authoritarians around the world; and despite his overt racism, culminating in the callous kidnapping of thousands of poor immigrant children from their parents with no plan to return them.
Even if Trump is removed, it is deeply depressing to think that there are millions of people out there whose moral, ethical and human compass is so compromised that they still support an administration capable of all these abominations.
This tells me that even if we remove this Trump from power, there is a Republican party out there that would happily elect another one just like him. And then another one, and so on, until their right-wing authoritarian dystopia is finally realized.
5
Insanity: Expecting different results while doing the same thing over and over again.
One party's failures (ie. @realdonaldtrump, Cheney, W, etc.) are the Democratic party's mess to clean up.
Lost on a Republican, sure - it's the genius of a two party Democracy.
2
It seems to me that this regrettable situation boils down to facts, reason and morality. Republicans have chosen their party over all three. They have also put their party on a pedestal far above their country. Shame on them.
It is quite evident to me that Trump has committed more than one hundred offenses that would be seen as impeachable by Republicans if a Democratic president had committed them. This enormous double standard flies in the face of reason.
Trump is jaw-droppingly dishonest, as are many of the people who debase themselves by joining in his attacks on the mainstream media and the truth. And he is quite clearly a moral degenerate. Putting children in cages is just one piece of evidence for the Republican party's shocking immorality. Add to that their celebration of House legislation that would have caused tens of millions to lose their health insurance, their inequality-increasing attacks on organized labor and tax cuts benefiting their wealthy donor base, their shameful denial of climate science, their weak response to cyber attacks on our democracy by a hostile foreign power and their own attacks against fair elections and democratic norms (e.g., effectively stealing control of the Supreme Court).
3
I agree with the authors about Mike Pence as "parachute."
But would Mike Pence ever have been the VP or POTUS nominee had the GOP never have had the wake-up call of Donald Trump as POTUS? I think not!
1
The writers are obviously well educated and intelligent. But they do not see the obvious - their party has elected a corrupt criminal and many within the party are very likely conspirators. This is clear and they are disregarding it, treating this administration as somehow normal. It is not.
5
Trump will not resign. That would remove him from the tradition of presidential immunity for his crimes and treason.
2
The idea sounds crazy, because it is. The GOP today is the very same party of 2015 that allowed this impostor into their ranks, never mind that their ranks were all that good to begin with. They will not do anything unless they are clobbered in the polls. Only voting can do it.
3
The "cult quality" to Trump's support is well named. Remember, it's based on the perception that "liberals" are ruining our traditional culture, mostly by supporting diversity in everything from family groups to government. It's a "white fright" problem, greatly accelerated by waking up the day after election day in November in 2008 and finding that someone named Barack Hussein Obama was elected POTUS. They never got over it. Now it's progressives' turn to be astounded by the election of a President who seems to be so threatening. But time moves on and so do Presidents. The Big Bad Obama is gone and in time, likely in less than two years, the Tyrannosaurus Rump (T.Rump, Trump) will be gone too. Then his successor will be leading the effort to unwind all his administration's actions. We really must be patient with our white fellow citizens who fear the loss of their culture and we must understand they need time to learn everything will be OK. The ancestors of our black fellow citizens had no such luxury some 300 years ago when Europeans took them by force virtually overnight to be enslaved in a foreign land. We have only begun to address that history and we must keep making progress. But vilifying the truly frightened white population will not help. Let's get out the vote. Let's get people interested in the process by showing everyone that we are addressing our problems and challenges, not just opposing one another.
3
America has a "two-worlds" problem with Trump: those who love him (white racists, Republicans, evangelicals, frauds, tribalists, xenophones, mysoginists) and everyone else who really, really don't want him to be president. The split seems to be about one-third for him, two-thirds against. This is truly a country divided. Trump is playing the Wall like a piano to amplify and exacerbate our differences. He is an angry, hateful, ignorant, vengeful man who loves causing chaos and pain. But he is a symptom, not a cause. He is nothing without his red-hat followers. New Yorkers who've lived with him have made him a joke and booted him out of their local elite. So now the joke's on us. Rs in Congress follow, they won't lead. They fall in behind Mitch McConnell who is a political criminal. I've been hoping for a "sanity caucus" as the authors propose, but I don't see it coming. Instead our national economic divide will worsen as income disparities increase, services decline, and millennials confront bleak and hollow futures. Then out of desperation we'll reorganize both parties and take it to the streets in some combination and in either order. Chaos-lover Trump wants it in the streets. Meanwhile the GOP of nasty old white men will go the way of the Whigs. Good luck to the rest of us.
1
Sorry, but Pence
is guilty of purposefully ignoring what President Fearless Leader has been doing. In fact, he’s a cheerleader. so both must go.
3
Nah, dog.
The Republican Party has not been healthy or rational in my lifetime, which started around the same time that the "Southern Strategy" helped put Nixon in the White House. My earliest political memory is of Nixon's resignation.
The last 50 years have entailed a power hungry, morally bankrupt Republican Party using increasingly cynical means to means to con the electorate. Paul Krugman's recent column, "The Empty Quarters of U.S. Politics" is instructive -- many (most?) Republican voters would favor the more progressive economic policies that Democrats offer. However, with a combination of "Socialism!," "Own the libs!," and "God, Gays, and Guns," Republicans have been very successful at getting people to vote for enriching billionaires.
The Republican Party is a criminal enterprise that is eventually going to run out of old white people (not a renewable resource).
3
Tricia from California:
@C Wolfe Actually, it seems to me that one person from the state of Tennessee has more power than anyone.
@Tricia
It seems to me that one person from Kentucky has way more power than anyone.
Roars of approval? Which SOTU were you watching?
There were bursts of applause, but they were not about Trump. They were the requisite nonsense that always accompanies the inevitable saccharine and sentiment. The false notes about unity and American greatness. The great heroes and poignant anecdotes.
As to the thrust of the article, the Republicans can't escape their steady journey to irrelevance just by trying to eject the tumor. The rest of us will take care of that, aided by Mueller's findings and the SDNY, which will soon enough issue indictments against Trump and his closest criminal cronies, including Jr. and Javanka.
You fellows tilled the ugly soil and planted the seeds that grew into Trump. Now you reap the harvest.
2
Once trump is gone - what happens? What the GOP stand for? Assume - for a moment - that this was the end of his second term. Who would the GOP and the base vote for?
Romney? No. Flake? No. Any other establishment republican - no.
Another lunatic like Coulter, Limbaugh or Fox propagandist- probably? But, hopefully, none of those would win the general. We have descended very far with the current Russian puppet. But this far and no more.
2
Republican are Trump. They are indistinguishable. How can they do anything about him?
1
Thank you Gentlemen. I’ve been waiting for this article.
2
Thank goodness that a President can only remain in office for eight years!
The depths of his criminality are about to be exposed and every point in this article will be moot.
2
When I saw the title of this piece, I thought it was going to be about climate change. We're rapidly making our planet uninhabitable and Republicans are happy to stick their heads in the sand about that, too. Let the rich get richer and make sure women keep getting pregnant and birthing those babies, while the president brings down both our democracy and our planet.
2
Criminality, incompetence and crisis (fake ones like the immigrants coming over the border) are what the GOP stand for. Trump was not elected because his voters were fooled. They saw what he was and liked it. They are not blind, they are complicit.
3
How could this group ever get the United States out "of this mess"? These "Republicans" see no mess? They don't have the ability or inclination to organize anything but more chain reaction pileups. How could you entrust the comeback of American democracy to this dangerous bunch of corrupt, incompetent, bigoted, ignorant, vacuous anti-democrats? I apologize for the strong language. (I'm Canadian.) Nonetheless, my condemnation stands. Good luck to my many American friends and neighbours of goodwill.
2
They get it - "The most troubling ... the most disappointing — development of the Trump era ... is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party."
Then they don't - "they do have a parachute ... Mike Pence"
The problem is the party. Putting a different face on the party, particularly that of Pence, won't change the party. It won't solve the fundamental problem: The Republican Party is a cancer eating at the heart of the USA.
2
Pence will never be President. He lied under oath; there are other improprieties just waiting to be exposed at the right moment.
A more likely scenario is a President Pelosi, which may explain why the foolish and compromised republicans don't remove the evil and possibly demented WH occupant.
2
it shows how removed liberals have become that Republicans are more willing to support Trump than give liberals a victory
Trump is just the tip of the iceberg with regard to things that are wrong with the Republican Party. Begin with their refusal to acknowledge reality and the truth. Continue with their war against science and the truth-telling media. And cap it off with their anything-goes crusade to hold onto power by whatever means necessary including courting and nurturing racists, vote suppression, rigged elections, etc.
I acknowledge that Trump is the most visible and ugly lesion of this party. But Republicans have stage 4 cancer, and a Trexit is like using a band-aid to treat it.
2
Why on earth would Trump's electorate abandon their Pied Piper of white grievance. After all, the single-most animating issue for these people is fear of white cultural displacement and loss of privilege. There's no bottom to this noxious well, and Trump will tap it whenever the need arises ... count on it.
2
Maybe the Republicans should apply the Marie Kondo method of "tidying up" to the White House. If it doesn't spark "joy," then dispose of it. But we may have to wait until 2020 for the sanitation truck to arrive.
3
When someone in the GOP recognizes their responsibility to the Nation and not the donors as well as their overpowering need to be re-elected, perhaps the nincompoops such as Trump can be erased.
3
I'm afraid you'll have to give it up, "centrist" republicans. You are likely the only two left.
2
More irrelevance and incoherence from Never Trumpers.
Trump is at 50% approval as I write this.
The chances of him losing to the 50 loony leftists on the Dem side running for POTUS is pretty much 0% at this time.
1
If impeachment is only an annoyance by the House and impossible in the Senate, "Trexit" will require a threat from the left. The current minority and female candidates lack substance and Mr. Trump is not shaking in his boots. Trexit is just another chapter in the fantasy by the Green Dreamers. Democrats can’t expect a coup d'état anytime soon (unless Mr. Trump needs more of the sympathy vote).
2
Democrats got us into this, too. They rigged primaries so that they could field the worst candidate possible to serve as a foil to Trump, and supported that choice with arrogance and blindness. I blame both parties for failing to provide a candidate to vote for. Most voted against something/someone. I hope that never happens again.
8
For decades I voted for the democrats and reaped NOTHING from it, unions got smaller, clinton shipped jobs to Mexico, NOTHING got done on illegal immigration! The country continued big business consolidation and became even more corrupt!
In desperation I voted for Trump! That is the reason we need a system where we can demand a change of leadership, not because of Trump but because the system is so corrupt it does NOTHING for its people! Our democracy is a failure living on investigations, corruption and false promises. Once elected the corrupt can be ensured of at the least four years of despotism! Democracy is a failure because we do not have a vote of confidence and we can effectively be ignored
10
The Republicans used every dirty election trick on the books after years of carefully executed voter suppression and gerrymandering. Why would they lift a finger to restore justice and democracy? Certainly not out of patriotism. The Republicans prefer having Trump the Putin stooge in the Oval Office to giving up one iota of ill-gotten power.
14
While interesting, this Oped misses the key point: What does this foray on the part of many Americans into Xenophobia, Nationalistic Fascism, Racism, and Autocracy mean? From what ugly miasma did it arise? Does it reflect our true inhumanity or is it a temporary deflection in the long arc of justice? How can we ever reconcile the two views of life that this represents?
Sure Republicans may come to their senses and make a practical calculation to rid themselves of this losing politician but the damage has been done. We have seen that our "better Angels" can be routed by our worst instincts.
8
Mr. Trump will exit, IMO, when we the people tire of him. He's a media figure, and we are media addicts.
5
Republicans and independents and Democrats experienced a sense of truthiness with Trump’s narrative, as specious and misrepresentative of realty as it always has been. They felt that he understood and would represent their interests. He has succeeded in following an agenda that is the most plutocratic in our nation’s history. There has not been a time since the Gilded Age when wealth determines political and economic power comparable to today. We are less free and secure in our liberties today than only two years, ago.
The fault is not Donald Trump, it is the mutual distrust of Americans in Americans upon which can manipulate all of us, as he remakes the world as the preserve of the super rich and multinational corporations that allows it to happen.
2
I certainly wouldn't bet on anything decent coming out of the Republican Party - and neither should anyone else. Republicans, even before the manifestation of the Tea Party and it's conception of Trump, has always made a history of digging deep nefarious ditches based on their unending desire to serve the top 1 percent that the incoming Democratic administration must spend 2 terms in office to dig out of - this will be no different. Until the Republican Party stops making a living off of lying to people least capable of knowing they are being lied to, that party is doomed - 24/7 conservative news whispering sweet nothings to the worst demographics doesn't make matters any easier.
13
I hope you're not really waiting for Republicans to fix the mess they created. They like it. It's up to the voters to vote them out and MAKE them clean up their room.
9
One fateful day in Guyana Jim Jones had a 90% approval rating.
There are similarities.
21
The figure of 80-90% of Republicans supporting Trump is widely cited. What is not cited is the actual number of Republicans, which is now about 35% of the electorate--almost exactly the number of Trump supporters. The point that a 1/3 minority ruling a 2/3 majority as cited in the article is absolutely crucial. Minorities ruling majorities never work out. Look at Iraq under Saddam Hussein (minority Sunni rules majority Shi'a), or the reverse in Syria (minority Alawite rules majority Sunni). Many more examples exist. The only way the minority can continue its rule is through cheating or repression. So guess what? That is what Republicans are doing--cheating and repression. We must stop this now or we will soon be like Syria. Not a pleasant prospect.
20
Unless many (and I mean millions) of Americans can magically change their skin color, the Republican fever will not break. The core issue is racism, (they don't even bother trotting out fiscal policy anymore).
A good idea would be to severely limit each state to only the federal spending they pay for. The country should insist on no further wealth transfers to red states, their farmers, or their rural poor. Perhaps then this fever might break, but only after many years of suffering and economic stagnation.
13
If removing Trump lets the Republican party off the hook, allowing the party to escape answering for it's crimes of amoral political extremism, then that would be a very bad thing. Trump arose to power *because* the Republican party first allowed it, and then supported it wholeheartedly. The Republican party should not be allowed to escape its culpability by blaming it's champion president. That would be a cover-up of epic proportions and an outrage against truth. If they want to rid us of Trump, they should first admit their culpability.
17
Tax cuts for the wealthy Trumps everthing and everyone
3
The GOP began sowing the seeds of its own descent when its leaders: burglarized the Democratic HQ and lied about it until proven otherwise; bad-mouthed their/our own government of the United States for votes (Reagan); impeached a sitting president when a lesser consequence would do (Gingrich); and triggered an unpopular, budget-busting war that would begin the downward spiral into huge deficits (W.). And then there were all those many decades of dirty political tricks (see Lee Atwater and Karl Rove). After behaving so heinously after all of these years, it was only natural the GOP should hitch its star to the likes of Donald Trump--a lying, lightweight TV personality with no appreciation for American history or values, and one in fact who follows in the footsteps of lying, burglarizing, bad-mouthing, excessive spending Republican predecessors of the past. But this time, a President Trump added the act of treason as the cherry-on-top of the list of GOP transgressions against its country. I don't know how the Republican Party can suddenly become well after all these years of its cancerous history spreading into the very marrow of its being. It can start, certainly, by joining forces to rid itself and the country from the Trump malignancy on our body politic. After that, though, it should disband because there is nothing good that remains of the GOP.
20
Conservative propagandists over the years have managed to install in many minds the phrase "tax and spend" to describe Democrats. Making it sound like it's some sort of righteous and justified blanket condemnation. But in reality, using tax money (rather than borrowed money) to enable spending is the only way to balance a budget.
Trump, on the other hand, is maxing out the nation's credit cards. He's spending money like a drunken sailor and cutting taxes at the same time.
No matter how he tries to justify his pandering of the ultra wealthy, his recent "tax reform" bill is projected to add another $1,700,000,000,000 to our federal debt over the next decade.
And that credit card debt, of course, is not free. Interest on our federal debt is a very big item in every year's budget. It alone could finance a lot of social welfare programs.
12
A start would be to dump Trump and McConnell.
But although that might be politically wise, it is a bit late in the day to develop a sense of morality, integrity, ethics, patriotism, ...
.. not to mention upholding their Oath Of Office.
9
the republican party that finally turned against nixon is not the nefarious republican party of today. today's republican party has turned away from truth, science, and patriotism. they are supporting a president who is wrecking our alliances that have kept the russians and chinese at bay and have instead handed the world over to them. they have sold their souls for an extra seat on the supreme court that has proved of dubious value if the recent vote by the chief justice on the latest abortion case is any indication. nothing is going to change the republican party until that 90 percent base wises up and realizes that they have been duped and are being taken to the cleaners.
19
Actually the United States does not need either of its two dominant political parties and would be far better off without them. Unfortunately, they continue to effectively block access to any third party; that is why we are always faced with a lesser-of-two-evils choice at the ballot box.
4
When the Ethics and Public Policy Center over at Brookings steps in and tries to appeal to reason, we know they know the GOP has a problem. But the problem they have is not the problem they think they have.
The GOP is unfit to govern a modern economy in a fast paced changing world that is facing huge challenges. Every single American needs to be healthy, educated, and fit to meet these challenges. The GOP has no policies to make this happen. Their issues are abortion at home, blowing stuff up overseas, and staying in power.
The future the US faces does not fit in with where the GOP was trying to take the country.
Trump doesn’t even how to operate a lap top, can’t send an email, and can not or will not read the required daily security briefings. This is how your child turns out when you park them in front of the TV for hours on end.
This presidency is so much worse than we think it is. Yet, this was the GOP’s best offer in the last election. Remember their crowd of contenders in 2016? Sad.
30
Opposition to "The Great Divider" has to be de-politicized--taken out of the mere realm of politics--to both facilitate his and his politics of resentment's demise and to replace him and his politics with someone and something unifying, what this nation desperately needs. The way to do that is up for debate, but Americans can be unified on opposing him by not calling participation in public service "politics". That implies manipulation, one of 4 markers of cultural corruption I identify (the others are materialism, ego-centrism, and trivialization--all embodied in Trump and Trumpism).
Our journalistic authorities--like the NY Times--are not fully de-politicized. They are the best candidates for running such a campaign, can make the best appeals for de-politicization and the destruction of the current Republican party, the threat of which can ultimately separate conservatives from Trump's bastion. We need better consensus on our freedoms--for and from--like free markets not as unregulated but free to be accessed by all. We need much better impartial, civics education.
Until conscientious citizens--and I hope there are still many--realize the depths of our democratic dilemmas, we won't succeed much on these goals.
1
If indeed it is possible to save our democracy after Trump is out of office, it will likely take years to fix the damage already done. And I have absolutely no confidence whatsoever that the GOP can or will lift a finger to help get us out of this mess.
Former GOP pundits continue to blather on about their amazement at their former colleague's continued support for the nut-case in the Oval Office. The rest of us are simply moving on without the GOP. It's Trump's party now.
This country has a sizeable minority of people for whom Trump's putinistic vision represents the way forward. Quite frankly, the power of this Trumpian minority concerns me more than the man himself. The majority must make it's voice strongly heard via the mechanisms our constitution provides.
The ballot box is the key to getting us out of this mess. Good, decent Democrats running for office everywhere. Democracts encouraging young people to vote. Democrats choosing our candidates wisely.
We made a good start in 2018. Now, we must finish the job in 2020 and 2022. Let's move beyond Trump and his GOP.
19
The only thing worse than Trump staying on is that Pence moves into his place and pardons him.
This is a man who can’t be left in a room with a woman who is not his wife for a single minute. Given Pence’s performance when he’s been allowed to speak and to act, there must be more to that story. I prefer that Trump gets impeached and goes down in flames all the way to the 2020 election line, that Pence doesn’t get to pardon him, and that the State of New York finishes the job and locks him up ensuring that he still gets the life long protection that comes with the presidency.
17
The authors state that the Republicans "do have a parachute, one named Mike Pence," but they forget the Watergate lesson. Gerald Ford was so tainted by his association with Nixon and Watergate that he could not win re-election. Pence is an even weaker candidate than Ford. Pence has been much more closely aligned with Trump than Ford was with Nixon. Plus, Pence is widely regarded as a religious fanatic and a tool of the Koch brothers. The many who detest Trump will line up to vote Pence out. If the party pulls this ripcord, no functional chute will billow.
14
interesting comments below on this. Trump supporters look at strong job market, stock market and feel that he is doing a good job? Most of his supporters do not participate in this economy- they are waiting for the old coal/manufacturing jobs that are never coming back. The GOP is bereft of any good ideas, other than talking up war, praise for dictators etc. They diss young politicians like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez for her New Green Deal or other big ideas because they are too afraid to talk to their supporters about the changing world. Weather AOC's plans become law or part of it does, great leaders talk up vision for their country. Trump & the GOP have no ideas and talk up hot air! They lose in the long run because of this!
16
@Sudha Nair
A O C and the Green New Deal is our future.
To think otherwise is to have your head firmly planted in the sand. We can use new ideas, especially when they benefit Americans and America.
The money spent on infrastructure, jobs and cleaner air and water is a bit more than the money spent to on the tax cut for the wealthy.
Where will that money be better spent?
3
It's only about the economy to people who don't really understand how fiscal policy works. What is clear, and re-verified by Trump's SOTU speech, is that abortion is still the single most important issue to the millions of evangelicals who voted for him, and voted against Democrats for giving women choice.
16
@San Francisco Voter: People who buy into the notion that the US is "under God" attribute their own troubles to God's alleged wrath that the US allows abortion.
1
Glad to see at least two realists from the conservative camp come out and share some refreshing insight. I agree that GOP needs to step out to resist 45 more actively, although most members might feel too entrenched in his camp and the junior legislators might feel powerless to speak out for fear of severe political cost. Yet, without banishing the Trump cult, GOP indeed will not be able to go back to the constitutional-conservative party. No one in GOP would want to be called either a loser or a martyr. Frankly, I'm surprised some GOP legislators in the federal and state-level have not sobered up, jumped off the ship and formed a third party during the last two years, which America needs badly. Grow up, or rather man up, GOP!
4
Thanks, Electoral College.
We are now ruled by a minority president from a minority party that is comprised of "rural, evangelical and “non-college” supporters."
Just great. The perfect target for lies and diversions.
We cannot wait for Trump to be gone.
We have to fix this system and also end: dark money, voter suppression and gerrymandering.
Are we going to stand by as our planet is slowly rendered unlivable? And ration health care by income?
23
The Electoral College was put in the Constitution as a gatekeeper to prevent Trump type politicians from getting elected. The political parties undermined the process by stipulating that the EC voters had to follow the popular vote instead of as the founding fathers intended, a brake against dangerous populists. The voters were supposed to be politicians and elected officials, not Bob and Mary who were appointed by party favor, usually donors.
9
@DENOTE MORDANT: Do you believe the popular vote for US president was conceived as just a sham for everyone?
1
The office of the presidency has been damaged beyond imagine. For me it has demonstrated how tenuous our hold is on societal norms and how fragile our republic actually is. The article focuses on how quickly politics can change when the impossible becomes possible. In my mind this has already happened.
13
"When fascism comes to America, it will come draped in the flag and carrying a cross." - Upton Sinclair
We've had two fortunately only half-measured developments of this sort with W and now Trump. And the Reagan Restoration had some undertones. Do we dare risk another in the near future? Sooner or later the stars could align even more unfavorably - perhaps with a more dire perceived threat and a more directed intentionality - and we could experience a stronger demagoguery more difficult to repel.
21
@Rocky: The right wing has been plotting this since it enacted the unconstitutional law that brainwashed a substantial fraction of three generations of Americans with the ludicrous belief that the US is "under God", which essentially divorces all human authorities from responsibility for anything.
1
The fact that Trump has 90% approval rating among Republicans in spite of all the evidence of his unfitness for his high office is a sobering reminder that it is not that they are expressions of Trumpian views and aspirations, but that Trump embodies the views and aspirations of those who have long held to an ironically Darwinian view (for flat earth Republicans) of the survival of the fittest (who are exclusively Republican, of course). They have replaced the Divine Right Of Kings with the Divine Right of the plutocrats. Their singular focus on the economy to the exclusion of everything else has so limited their openness to other dimensions of humanity that Trump, like many of them, must maintain the fiction that their wealth (as the prime symbol of their worth as humans) is much greater and more secure than it is in reality. How else do you explain why Trump & Trumpettes are so fearful of any attempt to seeing their actual Tax forms. They obviously don't believe that the truth will make them free!
11
Trump's presidency will end, probably in 2020, and a Democrat will be elected. This will immediately end the Trump domination of the GOP. The Trump supporters may take over the GOP but it will be the Trump party with no relation to the party as it existed before 2016. This leaves many Republicans with the possibility of forming a reformed Republican party, perhaps claiming the center and leaving the right to the Trump party. They could probably win some Democrats to their new party. It is difficult to see how the Trump party, based on fear, hate, and lies could maintain its 35-40% claim on the electorate. And the end of the Trump presidency would probably clear the film from the eyes of those who only saw the world and life itself as Trump saw them.
6
Surely the complicit Republicans understand that Donald Trump is not our popular president. But for the antiquainted electoral college and an incredibly small and even questionable 79,646 votes cast in only three states, they must also acknowledge that we would not be in this national quagmire. And yet, they overwhelmingly choose to overlook all democratic and constitutional norms in support of Trump's fake presidency in order to keep their agenda alive, even at the risk of putting their party on the wrong side of history.
137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 election. The Republicans know that Hillary Clinton won with 2.9 million of those voters over Trump, more Americans than any other losing presidential candidate in US history. We the people will add millions to those 2.9 million voters in 2020 to end this Republican regime and restore our nation to a true democracy in 2020.
11
The author contends the Republican Party "got us into this mess".
I would contend the Democratic Party failed to deliver single-payer universal health care, failed to jail Wall Street crooks, failed to pull-out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, failed to support a legislative pathway to citizenship, failed to pass a reasonable stimulus and therefore contributed to the longest recession in US history, and failed to address the very real needs of workers whose jobs were lost to overseas manufacturers.
"This mess" should be laid directly at the feet of a failed Democratic Party.
2
@bill janes: McConnell hamstrung Obama from the day he was inaugurated. Sabotaging others and blaming them for it is all there really is to the rotten to the core modern Republican Party.
3
The democrats watched the gop republic,the rule of law, relentlessly attack this democracy and did nothing, said little. I'll vote as far to the left as I can if only for their militancy
1
"In democracies, sick political parties usually need years in the wilderness before they can heal" This is meaningless: it sounds like some kind of law of political science, but there is no history of political parties spending time in the "wilderness" and "healing". In this country, parties have disappeared altogether, like the Whigs, or they have kept their names but changed their natures unrecognizably, like today's Republicans and Democrats back in the 20th century. Parties have been in and out of the White House, but "healing in the wilderness" is just a bad metaphor.
3
A deal for Trump and his family? Besides our nation's being a country of laws and not people, we are a country of individuals, and each individual must face the results of his or her own betrayal of our law. Families have status only among royalty and organized crime.
5
@Kevin Laughery: Laws are inert without judgment and execution by people.
1
The solution to Trump lies in the criminal justice system not in politics. Similar to the reaction to the crimes of Nixon, Trump's treason will lead to legislation and judicial determinations that will be of great benefit to our democracy and democracies around the world. Trump will in fact be one our greatest presidents, but for the exact opposite reason he would assert.
PROSECUTE RUSSIAGATE!
8
It doesn't sound crazy. But without honest self-reflection, self-respect, empathy, and a sense of country first, it can't happen.
2
When a radical minority continues to isolate itself ever more from society at large, in order to indulge its ever more fanatical agendae, it can only end one way, a divorce. The die hard Trumpists, who think he is America, and prioritize him over America, (about 20%-25% of the population) are as alienated from the rest of the country as the radical southerners were in the 1850s. Tribal loyalty forced enough more moderate southerners to support positions they did not agree with. Without that support at most 4 states would have seceded.
If that minority is determined to divorce us if they cannot rule us, we should be magnanimous, and grant them an immediate divorce on grounds of mutual incompatibility.
11
My advice to centrist Republicans is to do what centrist Democrats are doing:
stop compromising yourselves.
That is the winning formula we are pursuing. We no longer accept sexual harassment or racism in our leaders, for example.
Now we are free to discuss the degree to which health care costs should be controlled, for example.
Try it, you’ll like it. And the voters will too.
2
I hate to sound skeptical or partisan but isn't this the same Republican Party that gave us Watergate, Iran-Contra, no weapons of mass destruction and an economic meltdown triggered by regulatory repeals/non-enforcement of financial oversight? This pattern of reckless, irresponsible, and unethical behavior over the last 4 decades, leads me to believe that the Republican "leadership" is incapable of leading us out of this nightmare.
Please note, the sources of this OpEd...while the Brookings Institute is considered politically neutral, the Ethics and Public Policy Center is funded by neoconservative, right-wing sources. It was once directed by Elliot Abrams (yes, the same Elliot Abrams who plea bargained his way out of felony charges from the Iran-Contra investigation) and while Abrams was once considered solidly anti-Trump, he is now the Trump Envoy to Venezuela...hmm. BTW, if you think the "Good Old Billionaire Boys Club" is going to lead us out of this quagmire, then please read Winners Take All.
9
There is nothing that is "too much" for Republicans. Trump said it himself, and he grossly underestimated. He could shoot thousands, if not millions of people in the middle of Fifth Avenue (so long as they are "the people he is supposed to hurt") and not lose any votes. Republicans have no moral center whatsoever.
14
Mike Pence - fanatic evangelical, rank partisan, minor legislative player AND complicit in all this mess - is no answer. In a just and perfect world, (i.e., a world where a majority of Americans cast a fair vote) Trump/Pence and the rest of the GOP will lose HUGELY BIG, like the WORST LOSS EVER in 2020. Off to the desert with them all for 100 years or eternity, whichever comes first.
3
Is Donald Trump a magnificent example of humanity? I don't know him personally so I have no idea.
But he has done an amazing job in two years, taking our country out of the awful no-growth Obama experiment and into a period where anyone wanting to work has moe options than ever before.
We have been lucky to have him in the international arena as well. Our enemies now fear us while our allies smile.
Future historians will note this decade as the time the 90% of the news media aligned with the Democratic Party completely broke away from new reporting in the areas of gov't and politics to become partisan attack dogs.
When Donald Trump is gone, a new hate focus will have to be developed, and I doubt that it can simply be Pres. Trump's party.
The old enemies of progessivism - patriots, the religious, and those devoted to all forms of liberty - will all come under attack until a new boogeyman can be developed.
2
I’m not sure where you get your so-called facts but they aren’t true. The Obama era was not marked with no-growth. Economic growth steadily rose between the Republican-engineered Great Recession of 2008-09 and 2016. Trump has capitalized on the steady hand of the Obama administration while doing real damage to what growth we are enjoying through his tariff and policies and exploding federal deficit. At the same time, he is crippling our future by destroying the protections for a healthy planet through his decimation of the Clean Air Act, the National Parks system, and the Paris Climate Accord.
On the international front, our allies are not “smiling”; they are shaking their heads in dismay and disgust by Trump’s bush league negotiating “skills.” Our enemies do not fear us: they are running circles around Trump as he engages in ineffectual bullying.
Trump is an unmitigated disaster. The sooner we are rid of him, the better for all of us, including you.
2
Warren Buffet has acknowledged that this nation is in a 'class war' - and that his class is winning. Trump is simply the zenith of the race-baiting hatred that the GOP has used to further the goals of the plutocrats that flood them with campaign contributions. The 'Southern Strategy' has worked for over 40 years...putting people into office that preyed on the fears and hatreds of so many Americans, and Trump has simply shouted out loud what the other GOP candidates whispered.
Expecting the GOP to repudiate Trump? Don't hold your breath.
7
I've always wanted Trump to remain in office - because the GOP "has a parachute named Mike Pence."
He's not crazy or incompetent - but he is a religious fanatic who hates women, is morally bankrupt, and has abandoned basic decency, like the rest of the GOP.
The GOP chose Trump, knowing what he was. They supported Trump all the way, knowing what he was.
They now need to reap what they sowed, which is the destruction of their politics of hate, repression and environmental apocalypse.
We have to live though 2 more years of this, to play the long game and win.
6
The only thing the republicans seem to be capable of is getting us into messes we can't get out of. If you really want to save America vote Democratic!
6
The individuals who want to destroy democracy are people such as the newly elected Democrat Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She is promoting climate change ideas such as eliminating airplanes and other forms of transportation. She would be hurting our economy and eliminating millions of jobs in the process. She is the most radical politician and her bizarre ideas are not even popular with members of end own party. She is the politician that should make us worry. Of course, her ridiculous ideas will never materialize as people would never go along with such foolishness.
President Trump has improved our economy, created jobs and lowered taxes for many people and not only the wealthy. His enemies are accusing him of crimes of which he has not committed. His State of the Union address was excellent and touched upon all of the important issues. He is for all Americans and not just the select few. The poll numbers taken after his address were extremely high and proved people have his support. He is very likely to be a two term president and who could improve on his results? No one.
Well, the Brits are envying us because we made a huge mistake that will possibly be corrected in a couple of years (4 years total). They know that their mistake will affect several generations at least. I seriously doubt that the weak Republicans will do anything other than defend Trump until the bitter end. Heck, they are still defending Nixon.
And, so much destruction will have been done that whether he goes sooner or later does not matter. There is a 30%-40% of our voting population that is totally cuckoo about him and every dishonest thing he stands for.
As for Brexit, a relative that works for Astra-Zeneca says the damage is done. They had to plan for a worst-case scenario and have already moved their operations to Amsterdam. No company serving the EU will locate in the UK anymore. It has cost then 100s of millions to do it, so they would never go back.
3
While this is a lovely dream, it is still most likely a dream. As the steady erosion of functionality and sanity continues, Trump's popularity rating continues to hover around 40%. That unwavering core support is concentrated in enough red states that getting the required 20 Republican Senators to vote to convict him in an impeachment trial will be all but impossible. One thing this wild ride has taught us is Republicans care far more about hanging on to power (and their own jobs) than they do about the damage Trump's doing to the country and to their party. Short of truly extreme revelations (clear evidence of treason for example) that would drive Trump's approval rating into the low 30's or high 20's I don't see a path to finding those 20 senators.
5
The Republican Party has only one prime directive: the every greater concentration of wealth and power on behalf of the wealthy and powerful.
Ethics/morality/values, whatever you call it are middle class characteristics. So the GOP captured middle class votes by campaigning as champions of middle class values.
Then they got elected. Since the poor by definition don’t have wealth, the only way to give the rich more, is to take it from the middle class. Which they did. In 2014 the Middle Class sank below 50% for the first time in many many decades.
What’s the GOP to do to win election?
Well they had to find a way to pander to enough working class voters to win.
Enter Trump. He tells them what they want to hear. Voila, the GOP wins despite destroying the economy every time they are in power.
Trump dutifully signs a wet-dream-for the rich tax cut.
As long as Trump fulfills the prime directive, he’s golden inside the GOP.
The middle class is too small now for the GOP to run on protecting their values. They need a strategy that picks up working class voters too.
No other GOPer knows how to get working class to vote GOP like Trump.
From Trumps stand point, morality is not a working class thing.
People that don’t like Trump have middle class sensibilities - but that demographic is in rapid decline thanks to the success the GOP has had over the last 50 years.
Truly amazing when you think about it: they rarely win national majorities yet dominate the Supreme Court.
6
@Tim Kane: The whole system is positive feedback to its own inherent injustices.
1
This article is well-meaning but naive.
The Republican Party has been going down this road for decades, increasingly corrupted to the point of being wholly owned by the interests of large corporations and extremely wealthy individuals. Funneling more and more wealth to the top - by cutting taxes for the richest, slashing the social safety net, eliminating consumer protections and more - is the party’s only guiding ethos. All of the “populism” of anti-abortion, gun rights, racism and the rest is merely a means to garnering votes that can’t be obtained through the real, deeply unpopular platform.
The idea that the GOP is going to suddenly discover little-d democratic ideals is more than a bit ludicrous. Its power centers aren’t just indifferent to those ideals, they actively oppose them.
9
Yes if the economy and the stock market tank, DT's support will significantly erode. I'm a retired ndependent who only voted Republican once in my life, for a local mayoral candidate. Though I would hate to take the financial hit, losing a third of my net worth would be worth seeing him exit, and returning the country to solid ground.
7
From 1945 to 1972 (27 years) the GNP went up about 100% & the median wage went up with it. So did each sector’s median wage: poor, working class, middle class, upper middle class & rich.
That was fair & very stable.
From 1972 to now (47 years) the GNP has gone up about 150% but the median wage has remained flat. Give some sectors have gone up like tech & healthcare workers, we can assume it’s actually trending down for enormous amounts of people, giving us opioid & alchohol deaths epidemic.
This trend was not sustainable without help by elites on both sides of the isle. Workers had heard vague promises from Bill Clinton and Obama but the trend continued.
This has created a seam in our society that sooner or later some monster like Trump/Putin or worse was bound to come along and exploit.
All Trump did was bring up the issues that until now were never mentioned. He didn’t act on them but he did theatrics upon them and that’s far more than anyone has done on behalf of workers in 50 years. So many of them remain grateful just for that.
The biggest mistake Dems could make is follow Hillary’s example: align with BigMoney/Banksters & pursue minority-identity politics. This only provokes a majority-identity working class running to the GOP/Trump.
The only way out of this mess is progressivism on behalf of workers. Most of the Dem candidates are johnny-come-latelies/rhetorical progressive w Hillaryesque ties to BigMoney. Only Warner & Sanders have credibility here.
6
@Tim Kane: US population increased about 50% since 1972.
@Steve Bolger an enormous amount of that through immigration.
I mean LEGAL immigration.
After inheriting Bush’s Great Recession and the jobs crater it created, Obama endured an entire year of negative employment growth and went on to net the creation 10 million jobs.
If you were to look at that data: The republicans destroy the economy, the Dems under Obama fix the economy, the GOP should not have had any leg to stand on to win in 2016.
But if you include the LEGAL immigration numbers, it becomes another matter. During the Obama era 10 million immigrants came into the country. Presumably at least some of them need jobs.
So you inherit a jobs crater, then add 10 million jobs, but then import 10 million people, and the result is for many, many working people you’ve still have a job crater.
Those are the people who voted for Trump.
I’m not saying eliminate immigration altogether, nor am i saying we should be inhuman to asylum seekers but we don’t need to be allowing in to this country the equivalent the size of the city of Memphis ever year - which is what we are doing - at least until the median wage starts to climb along side GNP growth. In the mean time we could limit the immigration to a city the size of Mobile or Pensacola, per year.
The legal immigration is fueling a working class that is voting for Trump.
1
@Tim Kane: The US doesn't even grasp the economic law of diminution at the margin, which states that the more of anything there is, the less each unit of it is worth to those who have it, and the value of all of the units is set at the margin of exchange. It applies even to ourselves, because the more of us there are, the less we are worth to each other. Everything about this immigration impasse follows from denial that population growth itself is the source of the malaise.
It seems to me Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner fail to acknowledge a significant point.
It's not like the Republican party isn't attached at the hip to Trump. Afterall the leadership, McConnell and Ryan have actively worked to protect him. And of course we know that the Republican plank was changed to be more favorable to the Russians, - certainly suggesting the Republicans were intimately involved in that decision. More recently the R.N.C. decided to exclusively support the Trump campaign, excluding any potential Republican challengers. And of course there's the behavior of so many other Republicans that suggests unsavory influences, i.e.., Lindsey Graham, Jeff Sessions, David Nunes.
I tend to think the relationship between the Republicans in congress and Trump are now so intertwined, (co-conspirators), that they are likely to down with the ship.
I would love to see a Republican rebellion (although the thought of Pence as president brings chills), but I'm afraid that's a very unlikely possibility.
If we want change, and some sort of accountability I highly suggest voting for Democrats in 2020.
9
@Richard Wilson: At this point there should be no remaining doubt that the Republican objective is reduction of the federal government to courts, jails, cops and "defense".
5
The American voter will sit on the fence up to the last minute to decide Trump's fate - being the con man that he is, that could defeat the Democrats. It is my opinion the GOP must either force him to resign, or remove him according to the Constitution. I'd love to see him lose in the primaries to a fellow Republican, if one can be found to awaken those party members who truly put their country before all else. It is not traditional but it is legal. I'm certain with such a defeat in the Primaries, he would either immediately resign or 'walk out' (leave the country) as has been his wont. Then he would fulfill his wish - to be the first in US history.
2
@Pauline Hartwig
I don’t see Trump losing in primaries. Most GOPers are hand maidens to the rich. Trump speaks to the working class’ fears. He’s been helped along by the Democratic Elites becoming captive to BigMoney&Banksters: none more so than Hillary.
You can’t be a career politician in the GOP and play to the working class, even if that play is a pack of obvious lies. If you do you will lose your patronage.
Trump can because A) He’s not a career politician & B) His biggest patreon is Putin & Putin’s seen the graph of 47 years of flat median wage & understands how to exploit it.
The rest of the GOP is responsible for the median wage being flat along with help from Dems who were available to be bought. It’s the ability to keep that median wage flat is what sustains the career of a career politician like Trump.
That 47 year flat median wage is what is impelliing the progressive movement on the other side. The only GOP strategy to counter act it is Trump.
Once Trump is gone, the GOP is left to the career politicians to figure out how to counter the progressive movement and the tens of millions of xyz & millennial generations that grew up middle class only to find themselves locked out of it on behalf of the filthy rich and so are over-angry about it.
A deluge awaits. Trump puts that off a few years and buys them time to find a new strategy. Unfortunately it likely is Hitleresque, which Trump is just a foretelling of because the Rich won’t give up their $&power easily.
5
"We have not talked ourselves into being confident, or even particularly optimistic, that the Republican Party will treat its own fever." Only if forced to as with Watergate. The party adopted it's current rigid ideology and dogma after Eisenhower. Reagan cemented it in place and it took on a life of it's own.
And, there has been no reprieve since. We appear to be controlled by our very own oligarchs now who will be reluctant to lose the leash.
What is the solution? My own thoughts would follow the author's reasoning meaning Trump will cause some awful catastrophe that they cannot not ignore. Trump may immolate himself this way but it will not redeem the GOP. They will end up handing the leash to the Democratic party in the end, 2020 maybe.
Truth is though, we need a two party system. Eisenhower was a true leader. There doesn't appear to be such a leader on the near horizon for the GOP.
6
@Harold: With only two parties, the US is divided between anarchists and people who want functional government.
2
I think the most likely scenario is to ride Trump's coattails and work toward his reelection after which there will be little interest if he resigns or gets impeached. For all they need is a placeholder to get them past 2020 where Mike Pence can be handed the reins. Then after 4 more years of appointing judges and abortion is kneecapped, Republicans can walk away knowing they have helped 40% of Americans at the expense of the other 60%, the poor, the climate, and a widening income gap. Then the Democrats will take over and begin steering the rudder for the long process of reverse course. Many Americans may have a wariness about AOC and Democratic Socialism now. By then, however, the uncertainty for that will become an insatiable hunger. And what will Republicans do to try and keep their hands on the wheel? By then the masses will be even angrier and willing to go to extremes.
5
@walking man
By then, it will be too late...for everything and everyone.
2
@walking man: The federal judiciary is rapidly becoming as polluted with incompetent judges on power trips as state governments.
2
"The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency." This happened long before Trump became president. Good column though.
7
I am certain that in the middle of the night when he awakens and cannot get back to sleep, Mitch McConnell worries about the long term prospects of the GOP in general and his legacy in particular with a party in thrall to Trump. Yet he simply cannot get past the acute problem of a primary from his right in 2020 should he abandon the President. And so he hopes to tip-toe through the minefield, staying just loyal enough to avoid the primary, and privately rooting for Trump to be turned out of office in 2020 so he and the country can survive. Sadly, this is what passes for profiles in courage in our age.
8
Trump's base is a lot more secure than were those of earlier presidents, for this reason: single issue voters are dominating elections more and more. Redoubts are constructed around abortion, anti-government ideology, greed and selfishness, and fear. Humans have always been fearful, but now, as in the past, some are susceptible to leadership that promises protection and "final victory." Put the petty ambition of a Rudy Giuliani, the paternalistic arrogance of a Timothy Dolan, and the greed of a Charles Koch, together with the incoherent fears of a Joe Six-pack and we have the Trump base.
8
Trump did not become the Republican nominee by accident. He took their ideas--vote suppression; gun rights; intolerance for minorities, immigrants and women; restricting abortion rights and so on--and loudly and obnoxiously extolled them. He won the primary.
Guess who came in second? Ted Cruz. Cruz lost because he wasn't loud and obnoxious enough for the party rank and file. Imagine that!
Cruz saw the handwriting on the wall and despite the insults Trump hurled against his wife and father, embraced Trump and his ideas including "the wall." Cruz eked out a win in the Texas Senate election.
The party of Lincoln is now the party of the likes of Trump and Cruz. Smug. Intolerant. Obnoxious.
Trump won't change. The GOP must, if it wants to remain a party of the future.
9
most predictions of national elections will examine the candidate's strength and project and predict his/her electoral support. in trump's case we can do the opposite to be the most accurate. he has the unique ability of turning people and groups he disagrees with (or who don't kiss his ring - and rear-end) into mortal enemies who end up hating and despising him. add up all the groups of people and it is easily over 50% of the country. the hatred will not subside in the next 18 months and probably only solidify and increase the motivation to oust him, no matter the cost. can't win two straight fluke elections. the dumb as a rock moniker he put on sec. Tillerson had to have been made standing front of a (large) mirror, cuz it more aptly applies to him. he had a wonderful opportunity to go over 50% approval if had tacked to the middle and engaged a wide variety of groups and issues when he got elected. what did his almighty brain power tell him to do, he insult the American voters' intelligence by claiming 3 million of them were fraudfully cast. then claimed he had more attendees at the presidential inauguration than pres. Obama (twice), a lie easily proven to the vast number of americans . that 46% support in 2016 has only shrunk and will continue to shrink. like I said: dumb as a rock.
3
A quick and easy solution to the awful mess Republicans have made of our country would be the creation of a new role in national life. Call it the Grand Leader of Entertainment and Illusion (GLEI.). Donald Trump could be eased into the position gently and would hardly notice any change. The GLEI would have 24/7 access to FOX News, could appear before cameras (real or fake) at any time, and could keep his Twitter account. He could even have a small staff of convicted felons around him to help with the illusion part of his job. A facsimile Oval Office and Air Force One, though expensive, could be provided.
McConnell, McCarthy, and the Republicans in Congress wouldn't necessarily have to know of the small shift in roles. I'm quite sure they would never notice.
2
@Rose - clever idea...when Trump won the R nomination, I always thought he'd be better suited to the role of leader of the middle east. Move right in to Saddam's palace, annex several troubled countries, and let him build all the walls, have all the parades, and loot whatever wealth he could. He`d be much happier, and could have his own Fox network under his control.
1
As a liberal Democrat, the fact that Republicans in the AG's office are prosecuting Trump makes that article entirely plausible. Any of the prosecuting attorneys could provide a new field of candidates, providing a 'cleansing effect' to the Republican field. As a candidate, you might have to go through that 'shower' to be disinfected.
"he sheer weight of financial and ethical wrongdoing could become too much, even for many Republicans"
I truly wish this was so but judging from their actions and words, most Republicans today admire 'financial and ethical wrongdoing' - at least so long as it is profitable for the party's billionaire donors. And, as Ryan and other GOP politicians admitted in connection with their tax anti-reform, elected Republicans take their marching orders only from their donors. Trump is working out well for the billionaires - why would they abandon him?
4
Do you want Republican voters and politicians to force President Trump from office? All you have to do is come up with ironclad proof (a "smoking gun" in the vernacular) that he conspired with Putin to violate federal law. That's all. We've been waiting for two years for any such proof and to date have seen none. But I suppose hope springs eternal for some folks. In the meantime, most Republicans are happy with President Trump's policies (I know this is impossible for New York Times readers to comprehend but it's true, trust me on this) so don't expect them to abandon him without a damn good reason.
3
Nonsense. Even with such proof many of Trump’s supporters will say it was necessary and justifiable to prevent Hilary from being elected.
1
This is wishful thinking. While it would be nice, it is pure fantasy. The Republican party long ago gave up on quaint notions like patriotism and fairness. They are never going to change. Our only hope is that they all die off -- the sooner the better.
5
The only way we're going to get out of this mess and repair the damage is to vote out as many Republicans as possible. One thing the Trump administration did is reveal how completely corrupt the party is now.
4
@Nova yos Galan: "...only way?" We've got to win the Electoral College, which means a state by state campaign, not a pan-national appeal to what we on the coasts like.
1
The GOP did this to themselves by running RINO's for POTUS: to wit, John McCain and Mitt Romney (career politicians, who are a plague upon the land).
In 2016, the GOP management were determined to forced Jeb Bush down our throats, and WE THE PEOPLE rebelled and went with the candidate who was a strong man and NOT a career politician.
There were warning signs all along the way, and the GOP chose to ignore those warning signs.
I myself issued one of those warning signs to the GOP, and I was told, "Donald Trump will never be the nominee." AHEM!
Donald Trump is NOT a "strong man".
1
As long as the rural and small town base remains firmly behind Trump and the numbers suffice to mount credible primary challenges from the lunatic right, Trump will be faithfully supported by most of the Republican party establishment. It's a lousy choice, but to the intelligent opportunist slow suicide offers a better chance of survival than quicker versions.
And since the political situation is unstable and fluid, anything can happen -- including an improbable Trump international success that will boost his popularity. Republicans are like poker players drawing to an inside straight on the final round of cards; it's a longshot but it's now too late to back out. Clear criminality is already upon us, so that won't be enough. Nothing less than a catastrophic collapse, either economic or environmental, will be required to de-hypnotize the remaining true believers -- at which late point institutional Republicans may finally feel emboldened to jump ship. But by then it may not matter.
2
The imagined supporters of Trump are different to the glimpses (long and short) we get of his true supporters. Many are extremely rich and have no interest in the health of the nation of its institutions; some of these are in his cabinet. Others are merely wealthy...these are the ones that dominate, most importantly, the field of vision in which current Republican politicians operate. MM comes to mind; there are others. The stereotypical 'blue-collar' support of Trump is an imaginary constructed by reality-tv influenced journalists who are themselves in thrall to the rich-people controlled metroverse of unfettered spending power.
The benefit of blaming the poor and disenfranchised for Trumps election is obvious: we then don't look at his wealthy patrons, the country-club set and the corrupt and venal political class who enable him.
3
If Mr. Trump wins re-election it will be for the same reason he won his first term - he is more acceptable than the alternative. With the crop of Democrats running for President who are pushing for huge tax increases, Medicare for all and open border immigration policies, Mr. Trump may seem the safer candidate. The devil you know over the devil you don’t.
1
Yeah... no. Wishful thinking. Whoever got out of a Faustian bargain? Not that they want out: On the 30% the GOP will bet until the chips run dry. Expect more--not less--lying, race-baiting and fear-mongering long after Trump is out.
3
You're kidding, right? There's only one test for the average GOP pol - the money. Trump's been very good for them in the lucre department.
3
Republicans can't get us out of the mess, because they are part of the problem. The press needs to stop acting like there is an opportunity to appeal to the average white working class Trump voters reasoning. There isn't. Pretending like there is validity to a bothsidism argument with a cult like ideology that is antimajoritarian will only exacerbate the situation.
3
Russell Baker, the great NYT columnist who just passed away, wrote prose pearls on GOP/Trump in NY Review of Books.
Clips from On the Election—I, Nov 10, 2016:
“What Trump saw when glancing at the arthritic Grand Old Party was the empty shell of a political machine, available for occupancy. Adding it to the world-famous assortment of properties and consumer goods bearing the Trump name—hotels, golf courses, gambling casinos, colleges, beefsteaks—would not only give him some sorely needed political legitimacy but would also enhance his celebrity. He took it over.
... “this period might be called “the Trump Captivity,” and “captivity” describes the condition in which the GOP awoke late in the 2016 campaign to discover it was wearing the Trump logo.
He quickly learned that playing the political eccentric was a sure way to become famous in the media, and he played it to the hilt. With his insouciant devil-may-care style, calculated to make the hicks gape at his daring contempt for serious politics, he enchanted the media, which delighted in spreading tales of his descent into swinishness.
Whatever the election results, the Republican Party has lost its credibility as a political force. When the shock subsides, a few people who still care will have to decide what the party of the future will be, if any. At present it seems to be drifting passively toward oblivion. The campaign has made it clear that the party needs more than an overhaul. It needs reinventing."
6
@Meredith: A political party that exists to subvert government makes no sense.
Pundits write about their preference for an election to remove Trump, as if they knew what's going to happen. Are their memories so short? What makes anyone think he wouldn't win again? Especially when you consider that this administration has done a big fat NOTHING to prevent Russia from hacking the next election even more directly.
3
"The most troubling — and from our point of view the most disappointing — development of the Trump era is not the president’s own election and subsequent behavior; it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency."
Removing Trump will not restore the GOPs commitment to constitutional norms, conservative principles, or to basic decency. He is a symptom of the problem, not the disease.
4
I enjoyed this counter-intuitive article to the extent that I thought about it afterwards. Especially intriguing was the idea that the GOP would end the Trump presidency. It is suggested in the article that by doing so, the Republican party could reverse its alienation from the general public. I am not sure the general public is of much interest to the GOP. Meanwhile, the President's poll numbers remains stubbornly persistent at about 38% popularity among the general population. Donald Trump's support among Republicans remains very high. The President is implementing the GOP's core agenda faithfully, making him useful for conservatives elsewhere. Many Republicans see the recent shutdown as a brave attempt, despite being a failure, and worthy of admiration. While this article is less starry eyed than earlier predictions that Donald Trump would change his ways and become reasonable and presidential, it has certain similarity to them. It assumes that the GOP will conduct itself honorably. I doubt it. Instead, I believe they will continue to try to rig the system by bending the rules to the breaking point, as they have been doing since Newt Gingrich introduced the concept of winning at all costs. Such a strategy doesn't include taking down a GOP President, without being forced to do so.
6
Hoping that the GOP will solve the very problem it created over many many years—Donald and his ilk— is going to come to naught. It will likely be as effective as that other GOP panacea, thoughts and prayers, are for ending mass shootings. Which is to say not at all. Handwringing and platitudes are largely ineffective.
5
Where you stands depends on where you sit. I suggest that the authors look to the antebellum era to see how the southern states used their various constitutional powers to perpetuate slavery as a more instructive way to understand the GOP and glean how it might act regarding Trump. The GOP is fast becoming a minority that wants to impose its will on the majority. They gerrymander districts and deny people the ballot to control local races. Given how the senate or organized, a small group of people in rural states gets to exert a disproportionate amount of power of their fellow citizens. Lastly, like the southern states before the civil, they know their demise is inevitable. They have no interest in responsible behavior if it advances their own decline which is the end of their party.
9
Don't forget that more people preferring Democrats to Republicans is not terribly meaningful when our elections are specifically handicapped by Republicans by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the electoral college.
Republicans have won the popular vote for President only once in the last 26 years, and yet they control the Supreme Court. That's the court which endorsed Citizens United which further tips elections to Republicans.
To finally axe Republicans from power, Democrats need to get 60% of the vote for a sustained number of years. Then they can start the process of undoing all of the Republican assaults on our democracy.
16
If the Republican Party rejects Trump, it will not be because it has learned anything other than that he is a loser. It will still reject global warming, love deficits and voodoo economics, hate and slander Obamacare, and favor increasing income redistribution upward. It will still favor restigmatizing gays and sex outside of marriage. It will still practice gerrymandering and voter suppression and appeals to resentment and racism.
Republicans do not, on principle, learn from their mistakes. Instead, they pretend they never happened, as they did with the president who preceded Obama and whose name was rarely mentioned for years -- dunya.
The current Republican Party needs to be wiped out or marginalized, and a new conservative party created by splitting the Democratic Party.
6
Finally: A rational piece of political journalism from some conservative thinkers. Where have you guys been for the last
couple years?
What makes you think, however, that rationality will prevail with the current crop of GOP politicians? They knew -- even before they nominated him -- what they were getting with Mr. Trump. And yet they let him get behind the wheel. That suggests (at least to me) they preferred joyriding with a crazy person more than governing the nation. Happy trails!
Hope you have good collusion (er... collision) insurance.
6
When Dumbo flies.
3
We should ask our GOP senators and congresspeople if they feel good that Mr. Trump has the ability to order first nuclear strike.
If they try to evade the issue or say, "somebody would stop him", follow up by reminding them that stopping a U.S. president from ordering first strike would depend on an extra-constitutional, entirely ad hoc action.
If the GOP can't trust him with first strike--and it's hard to see who would--it has to admit he shouldn't be president. If they would, we should admit the GOP is too crazy even for U.S. politics.
6
To fellow Democrats: Picture a democrat's reaction if you were to suggest they switch to supporting Trump. That's the reaction of a Trump supporter should it be suggested that they switch to supporting a democrat. Both sides are like members of a battling nation, fiercely patriotic for their own side and highly adverse to surrender (considering what the other side has to say). I may be fully democratic, I may vote with the Democrats on all issues, but I also see that the other side is human too. Can we think for a moment that they might think they are doing right too? That they may believe, just was strongly as we believe in gun restrictions, healthcare, and diversity, that their wants are correct? Rather than closing our ears and spewing our anger and frustration across the media? Can anyone hear me?
2
Republicans really care about one thing and one thing only: taxes. Nothing else really matters. This man delivered tax "reform", so they say. Well, let's see what April 15, 2019 brings for his supporters. I think he's in for a very rude awakening.
5
America will continue on its downward trend unless and until the people choose to remove the vast lot of republicans from public service. And sadly that's very unlikely to happen anytime soon.
5
Pray for a deep recession. It will be Obama's fault of course, but it's the only unambiguous way to show the base their great president is more than an innocent victim of our country's law enforcement agencies.
No matter what the president does, the base will find it acceptable, saying he's not a choirboy. And unlike Nixon, Trump has the support of a huge disinformation apparatus from Ruppert Murdoch and talk radio. (I wouldn't count on the National Enquirer, though.) No proof exists that will convince his fans what a bad guy he is. No matter what he does, he will be their knight in shining armor, victimized by liberals and law enforcement. If he needs money, he'll simply tell the rich that his opponent will make them pay more in taxes which, uncharacteristically, will be the truth.
To break the lock will take nuclear war or a deep recession. Pray for the recession.
4
Impeachment is not and will not be on the table. Nor should any clemency for the Trump Crimes, esp those against humanity. A Mike Pence presidency appeals to those conservatives who would like a calm face on their trrible policies. It's not Trump who designed a tax cut that imperils social security. That's Pence and the Republicans. Mike Pence is as much of a White Nationalist as Trump, only worse, he said he's a Christian, a conservative and a republican in that order. An American was not even an afterthought. No thanks to Mike Pence. Let the republican Party reap what it has sown. I don't want to hear one word about morality from that quarter, ever.
11
@rxfxworld-
Unfortunately, the rest of the world will reap it with them.
I never worried about seeing another sunrise while Carter, Clinton, Bush-41 and -43 and Obama were at the helm. But I start and end each day wondering whether it will be my last because Trump destroys everything he touches through impulsiveness, carelessness and incompetence but especially to escape, to save himself. He is utterly indifferent about the damage that he causes, the lives he ruins; irrelevant, by his lights. He comes first, why he simply doesn’t care.
1
The sad desperation of the anti Trump establishment.
2
@Joe
You really think that wanting a president who hasn't lied 8.000 times; doesn't talk about imaginary tax cuts; doesn't disparage the Justice Dept; and has some understanding of the Constitution and his dutes therein is being anti-Trump?
4
@Joe, 11 indictments and guilty pleas in this administration.How much more do you need? Well, there will be many more. Be patient.
1
This is a too little too late situation. The Republicans lost their credentials as defender of protectors of political norms with the denial of a hearing for Merrick Garland. Even now, this editorial casts the ejection of Trump as a political expediency, not in any way a repudiation of his, or their, policies. They see their anti- American behavior circling the drain, and hope to salvage some credibility. What will probably happen, absent the three scenarios herein depicted, is a doubling down on Trumpism and an attempt to paint Democrats as wild-eyed radicals who want to turn the US into Venezuela, and open our borders to hordes of maniacal criminals.
And some will buy it.
Trump has been a windfall for Republican policies. They finally got their tax cuts for the rich. They got their supreme court justices who will defend business interests above the needs of the people. They got the unshackling of polluting industries. If they dump Trump, it will only be because they see him as a liability to those policies, not because the see which way the wind is blowing.
4
It almost goes without saying that pence is no panacea. More troubling, once you set aside the culpability of trump and his adopted party for our current sad state of affairs, is the trumpublican base itself. Beyond acquiescing to the rise of bald-faced racism, its existence e poses the soft underbelly of the religious right and their lemming-like obedience to what are literally voices behind the curtain. Is it acceptable to load the federal and supreme courts with an anti-women’s rights army, spew out a convoluted interpretation of the Constitutional law and spin a doctrine in Jesus’s name while turning a blind eye toward desperate asylum seekers and children who were kidnapped and forced into segregation camps, many of whom may never be reunited with their families? Swallow that and you swallow the rest, from the disastrous chipping away at environmental protections and voting rights to the systematic assault on our global accountability and steady march toward multiple potential wars, not to mention denial of rampant corruption and growing foreign influence in our elections. Sadly, as trump and his toadies get worse that base gets more entrenched, more intolerant, more self-righteous and less “American” with each day.
6
The republican party has finally ‘had enough’.
During their primaries they had no choice but to support Trump after he had so much success decrying the problems of white workers. His rallies were impossible to ignore, tho he disrespected John McCain. the Syrian parents of a hero, a disabled reporter. When he bragged abut groping women. The republicans had no choice. How they explained this to their conservative white christian base is a mystery.
Enough. Pence is a safe choice. He’s met with republicans. Found a compromise with the democrats before the shutdown, in which a figure of around 2.6 billion was agreed upon. Trump rejected it. With all the screaming and shouting, this much of a story. But it would have avoided the shutdown and the negative publicity the republicans had to endure. To add insult to injury, Trump may not get a better deal now.
I don’t like Pence anymore than I like Trump. His response to the opioid crisis while governor; he ignored it when it was harming urban inner city (black) residents. When it hit white suburban children it became a major issue. The definition of ‘a la carte’ religion.
The real issue is the information pouring out about Trump like an open faucet; recently open.
Two years of this? The republicans need to act soon; convince Trump that he’s done. Find their candidate. Work up the positive, bury the negative.
Relatively easy, if the country develops a collective case of amnesia.
1
Following the presidents lead, republicans can not be shamed into doing anything in the best interest of the country, but in supporting the presidents erratic behavior, and outright lies, there is strength in numbers, for now.
The writers really haven't stated which parts of the Trump agenda the Repubs have a problem with.
It's obvious the Repubs love all of it and are savvy enough to know that Pence wouldn't win a general election.
3
Problem with pence "solution" remains trump will require pence pardon for indictments, over year following stepping aside, whereby he loses presidential "immunity". This means (fortunately) pence is today's Ford; no longer tenably presidential.
As pence - GOP have formulated trump appointments and legislation to larger degree than trump, this is appropriate. Better question involves whether corporate dems will see it in their interest to agree not indict. If Sanders or Warren is candidate, Wall $treet dems may find "way" to see in their "interest"...for which they may lose another election.
1
What did republicans think at the state of the union speech?Hooray, he’s ruining our careers. Well, anyway, I do say hooray.
2
Delusional about Trump and the Republican Party, which was morally, ethically corrupt long before Trump.
If it hadn't been, Trump would have never found a home in it or Fox News, the Republican propaganda wing, years ago.
5
"But that is hardly the whole story. Recent developments should deeply worry Republicans, starting with those disastrous midterms."
Obama's first mid-term election results were far worse than Trump's. Nevertheless, he was re-elected in 2012.
"In the long run, a third or so of the country cannot effectively govern the other two-thirds with an unpopular agenda..."
Of course not, which is why the Democrats lost in 2016, and why they will lose again in 2020 if they continue to embrace socialist-progressive=--I know, that's redundant--policies. Third-trimester abortions, additional counterproductive gun-control measures, exceedingly expensive regulations to address alarmist forecasts of climate disaster requiring massive new taxes, these policies designed to give government substantial control of the lives of every American will be seen for what they are, and Dems will go down to the worst defeat they have ever experienced.
"the Trump paradox is that his support deepens among his most persistent admirers even as it erodes everywhere else."
It is not a paradox. Trump may be the worst president America has ever suffered, but rational people who don't want an IRS or FBI agent stationed in their homes will hold their noses and vote Trump--if he is the Reps' nominee.
Since I don't vote--it is immoral--I only care that progressive-socialists don't get elected because I care about the fate of my fellow Americans. Repubs aren't ethical enough to dump Trump. Too bad, America.
1
They got what they wished for and if the adage holds true, they'll be sorry - in the long run.
I'm grateful to Trump for exposing the ugly truth about Republicanism. They won't be able to look away forever.
3
The republican party has been corrupt since the 1980s when they decided their goal was to turn this nation into a one party system and they would use any and all tactics to achieve their goal. No rock should be left unturned to destroy democrats. Get big business money into politics, spread lies and propaganda and above all else rig the voting elections process through suppression and gerrymandering.
As far as Pence is concerned he is wannabe theocrat and is in the back pocket of the Kochs. Yes he knows better than trump how to get things done making him more dangerous than trump.
Basically republicans do not believe in democracy, they believe in the hegemony of free markets and plutocracy.
7
What is an impeachable offense? It's what Congress decides it is, subject only to some measure of confidence that its decision will be accepted by the general public. It's possible, but not probable, that at some pointTrump's conduct, even for Republicans in Congress, wll be deemd so contemptuous of our constitutional form of government, so dangerous to our national security, that video of him stepping on a cockroach will be deemed an impeachable offense warrating conviction and removal from office.
I've been saying since I first came to this country in the 1980s (from the UK) and took an appalled look at Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, George Bush II, Donald Rumsfeld, et al, that being a Republican is a form of mental illness. However, some people--even Democrats--have suggested that I've been talking in extremes.
However, we now have hard statistical data, cited in this article, to back up my analysis of the Republican so-called "mind": "Mr. Trump’s Gallup approval rating among Republicans is almost 90 percent and has never dipped significantly below 80 percent."
'Nuff said. Oh, vindication is sweet!
3
McConnell is an obstructor similar to Trump, if not even worse than Trump, has been around longer, and appears untouchable no matter what unconstitutional or otherwise unconscionable thing he does. Republicans are ok with him, ok with Russia, and are you sure there isn't anything they aren't ok with as long as it says Republican on it?
Democracy means having voters select who will govern them. The author's preference for back room deals by the people that, should "know better," and the wish to circumvent voters is precisely what led the Democratic Party into the wilderness of chaos in Virginia and elsewhere. Until the Democratic Party "leaders" realize all voters are not gullible fools and until they understand that promoting racist sexual predators as part of a "plan" to protect them,is losing proposition, nothing will change.
3
It's too bad that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is no longer taught in American schools because Twain's characters of the Duke and the King anticipate the outrageous con man, Donald Trump, who cannot be shamed however egregiously he lies (the inaugural crowd) and steals (Trump University and Trump Foundation). Even his racism ("There are good people on both sides") is anticipated in the novel. But even Twain would have thought that electing the Duke or the King to the Presidency of the United States would be too unbelievable for his readers. The Republican voters have been conned by Trump because, as with all con men, he has found their weak spot, their fear of losing their privileged position in American society to Hispanic hordes bringing crime and disease and taking away their livelihood. That's why they will never abandon him and the Republican members of Congress know it.
3
Right-wing populism isn't about having a popular agenda, it's about achieving racist policies regarding immigration and welfare. Trump's brand of populism is inherently us and them. There's no paradox. It's a race war.
3
The big difference between Nixon and Trump? Nixon wasn't a traitor.
5
The republic party is not solely responsible for our being caught up in toxic Trump. Secretary Clinton ran the worst campaign in modern America history. She wasted assets in Arizona and Utah while ignoring her key base in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Can anyone doubt that, had she run even a half-competent campaign, 100,000 votes among those 3 states would have been cast for her?
I defy anyone to make a case to the contrary.
2
@Muleman
It sort of depends on whether it turns out the election counts were actually hard-wired by a bad actor. In at least two of those states it would not be impossible.
Mrs Clinton did run a bad campaign, but she also got at least three million more votes than Mr. Trump.
3
@Grennan Respectfully: none of this had to happen if the Clinton campaign didn't insist on trying for a blowout rather than a "routine win". The popular vote came from some very high population states. Former president Obama understood how to reach out to voters in the complete Democratic base. Sec. Clinton either didn't or was, herself, a narcissist who couldn't accept the idea that 270 electoral votes would do just fine.
1
Republicans can get us out of this mess if the Republican National Committee (RNC) allows for a primary challenge. This would be an unlikely wish for the RNC, knowing this weakens the president who will still likely be nominated. The incumbents of the past half century with strong primary challengers (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush) were all voted out of office despite winning their nominations. Republican challengers would likely be reluctant to be their party's spoiler in the general election.
1
I cheered along with all the Republican legislators at the state of the union speech. They’re all going to be voted out of office. Trump has jeopardized their careers. Hooray.
3
I'm sympathetic, but this is wishful thinking. In fact the midterms were well within range for a two-year election, and the President's approval ratings are again bouncing up. Even if he were defeated, the Old Guard would not regain control of the Republican Party. It's too late.
4
Don't forget that at the 2020 election Republicans need to defend 21 Senate seats while Democrat's will only need to defend 11 seats.
In January 2021 we may well see a White House, Senate, and House of Representatives all controlled by Democrats.
7
@Wes...Great! But, who will be President? Who will be Senate Majority Leader? Who will be Speaker of the House? It will be difficult to choose our leaders from all of the wonderful Democrats.
1
Corporate PR and policy advocates (aka "Republican Congressmen") only support Trump because he's a useful media distraction and helps shift attention from inequality in America. He also helped them push through the corporate tax cuts.
The Trump administration has no policy focus whatsoever. The government was won in a high stakes match and to the winner belongs the spoils and so Trump and his favored corporate associates are using every opportunity to use government to enrich themselves. End of story. There are no other stories.
Everything is just another version of this big story about how Trump and his associates in congress and business are using their temporary political power to ripoff the country and abscond with as much wealth and power as they can before the inevitable backlash.
12
Vote Democratic up and down the ticket in all elections. Losing elections is the only thing Republicans will understand. But losing must be consistent and long term.
14
You're kidding, right?
5
In theory, the authors are correct, but in practice.. have they really taken a close look at today's Republican Party?
This is the party that dogmatically embraces guns, enthusiastically denies climate change, and shamelessly labors to deny Americans healthcare.
In the two years they had control over all three branches of government, they could have tackled any number of problems on their own terms, but the only things they could agree on were more tax cuts for their wealthy donors and more ultra-conservative judges.
What does the Republican Party stand for today? Tax cuts for the wealthy, indulgence of Russian aggression, massive deficits, and more tax cuts for the wealthy. Who thought this was a program for addressing the concerns of Americans?
Republicans can try and blame Trump for their impending stay in the electoral wilderness, but they have nobody to blame but themselves.
19
@Steve Dowling - Dear Steve, I know you said this twice, "tax cuts for the rich" but allow me to add this ".... and even more tax cuts for the rich."
And even more serious, those Supreme Court judges, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch just voted to essential deny women access to abortion or healthcare in Louisiana. They were narrowly defeated 5-4 but you can see that the Supreme Court is now in the hands of God and the Catholic Church.
2
The question that the authors have not addressed is the one of moral character and service to the country. The Republican party has shown itself poverty stricken on both fronts.
Character and moral principles have been eroded by any serious analysis. Service to a common good has been avoided in the name of power, self-interest, and commitment to its donors. Mike Pence would have impact on neither character nor service.
11
While arguably the current CinC, as well as the Republican Party in general, have clearly demonstrated that they are out of touch with most of the American electorate, the Democrats have similarly demonstrated a marked departure from their traditional platform. New York's shining star AOC is a glaring example of that. America does need some fundamental changes across the board in order to remain competitive globally, but neither the 19th century nativist tripe from the right nor the absurdly naive and self-defeating policies of the left are going to get us there. If ever there was a time when third party candidates were viable, I think it is probably now.
3
@Matt Rosen People who voted third party helped put Trump in the White House. I will not vote third party although I loved George Nader. I did not want Trump to win. That didn't work out too well unfortunately.
1
@Matt Rosen -- AOC is only a "shining star" because she's young, she's cute, she has a good story, she's media-savvy. The actual merit of her views isn't any issue to the media, or sadly, to many of those who are either for or against her.
She is young, she's clearly not stupid, I have hopes that in time she'll become wiser and more thoughtful ... would be hilarious if in 45 years she's ... another Nancy Pelosi.
Just exactly what "independents" are you talking about?
I laugh at Howard Schulz: "Billionaire Buttinsky" (see the Jen Sorenson cartoon) and his ilk.
1
Sure, Trumpy maintains high approval ratings among *registered* Republicans. But this is a misleading factoid - how many Republicans are *left* after Trumpy's disastrous first year?
So many respected conservative pundits and commentators switched to Independent, as did hordes of voters, that our idea of the number of Republicans actually left in the Party is foggy.
I don't think we'll truly know how much the Republican Party has contracted until much closer to the 2020 election, unless a statistician or two does a study in the meantime examining states' voter registration numbers....
5
@maktoo...We can simply rely on the polls as the elections approach. They were pretty accurate back then. At least until the vote counting started. Darn you, Putin.
1. I learned a new word: defenestrate. What a cool word.
2. Agreed. The Republicans have to get rid of Trump. He’s their mess. If it’s left to the Democrats or to the democracy of a general election, it will leave a lingering feeling that it was partisan. Especially, if as you say, you want a healthy two-party system.
2
That's a bit easy, Trump's election was a purely collective failure and only 55% of the electorate voted. I guess that's why last midterm turnout was much higher than the aphathic usual, voter remorse over the appalling nature of his presidency and their inaction to stop him. The American people fully deserves the raw awfulness of a complete term as a good lesson for not taking elections seriously though.
4
“Congressional Republicans supported and protected President Richard Nixon until the Watergate tapes provided irrefutable evidence of his wrongdoing.”
This was true for 45 years ago, but Trump and Republican State TV, Faux News, has waged a successful war on truth and evidence. The rules have changed. Trump says that he never meant it literally that Mexico would pay for the wall, despite him on video and audiotape saying exactly that dozens and dozens of times.
Look, Republicans have lived in an alternative reality since Ronald Reagan said that tax cuts for the rich would pay for themselves. The Republican party STILL stands for that, despite 38 years of evidence to the contrary. Republicans of all stripes cheered Trump signing the latest deficit exploding tax giveaway to the rich in 2017.
It is too late for Republicans to embrace reality.
21
In recent times the Democrats have abandoned workers, especially blue collar workers and Trump assumed the traditional Democratic role of FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ of supporting workers. This explains his Presidential victory which he was able to win traditional Blue industrial states such as Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
While Clinton was giving 3 talks to Goldman, the icon of Wall Street and of the 2008 finical crisis for $675,000 Trump was denouncing trade agreements and immigration which drives down wages (and not coincidentally, the Koch Brothers and the Democrats are aligned for this reason).
The Republicans are angry because in many ways, Trump is still the New York Democrat he always was. The Democrats are angry because they stopped supporting workers and favoring Wall Street donors, yet feel that Trump stole the election.
Since there is a need for one of the two parties to represent workers and the Democrats have abandoned that role, it seems that the Republicans will be that party, at least until the end of Trump's second term in 2024.
The only way that a Democratic candidate could possibly win over Trump is to resume their traditional role of favoring workers over Wall Street including combatting immigration which drives down labor costs. But too many Democratic donors favor immigration which drives down worker wages.
8
@David MD
I suppose all those good old ,pro-union, pro-labor white guys who intially hired the low wage immigrants were Democrats,eh? I suppose it is the Democrats opposing raising the minimum wage? I suppose it is the Democrats forcing employees to sign non-compete contracts,eh? In what universe?
2
@David MD
The problem with that is that the republican economic policies have never been good for the workers. Not a single bit and they are far more beholden to the rich than the democrats. All they have done is tax cuts for the rich. They belong to wall st. the most.
Meanwhile the democrats have tried to get healthcare for all the people, which includes the workers. Have worked to do infrastructure which would help.
There is one difference though. Republicans have used identity politics of dog whistles to appeal to the workers so that they could be taken advantage of for wall st. And those workers get nothing of economic welfare.
There is no republican policies to help workers, absolutely none. For the rich though they get all the benefits. Nice tax cuts, nice loopholes, keep wages as low as possible for those workers, keep the economy going for the rich. Trickle down economics brought to you by the republicans which have hurt the workers.
That is the real shame, those workers vote against their economic interest because of the appeals to their worst nature works every time.
1
@Skip Moreland, @Tim Lynch
You are correct in your assessment of the Republicans, particularly those traditional Republicans, the #NeverTrumpers. They are against the workers, and the Democrats used to be pro-worker, but now have given in to the will of the billionaire donors and Wall Street, (eg. Goldman and others).
The workers, the people that the Democrats used to care about in the days of FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ, had nobody to represent them since the Democrats had abandoned their traditional role.
Thus, we have the "3rd" Party, that of Trump, who is really a New York Democrat with his liberal notions and how is now more pro-worker than the Democrats which is why the traditional Republicans hate Trump (to them he is a RINO, Republican in Name Only with the exception of abortion and the nominations of the judiciary).
The Democrats hate Trump because they owe his loss to him because they had abandoned traditional Democratic constituency of labor.
Had Clinton abandoned Wall Street donors (and not taken $675,000 for 3 talks from Goldman where the media was not invited) and had she backed workers as Trump had, the Democrats would have won Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and won the election.
But to Democrats including Clinton, billionaire donors that wanted depressed worker wages through increased immigration was too important to them.
In order to win over Trump, all Democrats need do is resume traditional Democratic Policy.
Both parties MUST make disclosing tax returns the minimum hurdle to clear before nominating a candidate. Can you imagine the outcry if HRC had tried to run without doing so?
And on this topic, how much more hypocrisy can we take?
9
The Republicans in Congress have been managing a delicate calculus since Trump's very nomination. They understood he was detached from any party norms, that he was a serial liar, that he was a defective personality. Yet they wanted their signing puppet, and they got their big tax cut and a slew of conservative judges.
Now the calculus has changed, especially with the Russia investigation, the hush money, the veritable mafia surrounding him. The mid-terms should have been a wake-up call: they are bound to lose big in 2020 if they stick with him. The question is, at what point do they realize that Trump is sinking their lifeboat, and to save their own skins they have to chuck him overboard?
8
@Ken L -- they are shafted; they made a terrible decision and now it plays out.
Trump's base (and it is indeed very base) knows that this is the last hurrah. Even their kids (mostly) don't support Trump.
The party is already in deep trouble; however Trump goes it will be a smoking crater afterwards. My guess is that a Trumpist/neo-fascist party will continue, as one of several factions on the right. This will all depend on who comes next though --very personality driven.
The Republicans will show they have learned nothing if Pence is their savior. He'll be thrown in jail with the rest of the them, if there's any justice.
8
It's a nice thought. But the Republican party has repeated showed itself to be utterly devoid of accountability, integrity, and decency. The lie machine that is right-wing media ensures that the gullible base will continue to believe every ridiculous thing that passes Trump's lips, or simply not care it's a lie as long as they think he's "owning the libs". They are now a death cult, not a political party.
13
I believe Trump being forced out early would be a major mistake. Let him twist slowly in the wind for 23 more months and give the opposition a big bat to knock him out of the park.
6
@Richard Watt
...but,
while we wait, serious damage is done to our treaties, international relationships, rule of law, the structure of our government, the standard of politics, standards of presidential behavior, government workforce, and particular damage is done to our environment. Can we really afford to wait?
1
Donald Trump and his Family and Jared Kushner will resign only when they start to lose too much money.
Thus far, it has been financially profitable for them for Donald to remain as President. He is a false president - elected by manipulation - a president with an asteric.
5
There are two overarching questions that need to be answered.
1. What is the hold that Putin has over Trump? Is Putin by way of compromat telling Trump what to do, like a puppeteer.
2. What is it about our country that a Trump can be elected to the highest office in the land, and can there be a reckoning of the Republican party to be the vessel of such an incompetent leader
7
@jaime
Putin's hold is financial. Trump owes Russian financiers a lot of money, loans laundered through The Bank of Cyprus and deposited in Deutsche Bank. If Mueller gets those records, they will confirm the New York Magazine article from over a year ago. Trump needed money; no U.S. or European banks would loan to a known deadbeat. Russians got him the money, saving him from another bankruptcy. Putin owns him with that Kompromat.
Mueller has yet to put his cards on the table. The Russia probe is turning into much to do about nothing but a total appeasement to the liberal Democrats. Trump has roughly 22 months left in his first term and the clock is ticking.
1
@George
Really? The russian probe has found many guilty so far with quite a few suspects to go.
2
Or...... you could say that Democratic party overreach, that is now reaching comically absurd levels (read AOC and all this Socialism nonsense) elicited a reaction that resulted in Trump being elected. So no Democratic Party , you fix it (and not with Elizabeth Warren).
3
@My Aim Is True
Don't worry we'll fix it.
When the economy slumps America dumps Trump. Hoping for a recession. sad
2
One reason that Trump's approval rating among Republicans remains high is that moderate Republicans have left the party in droves, even here in blood-red SC.
They have left because they don't like his nasty name-calling, his anti-gay, anti-abortion (yes, really!), and anti-poor rhetoric. They aren't as sure about immigration in some cases, but they don't like that he calls migrants names and offers incorrect information about immigrants being criminals.
I suspect that if center-right Republicans are leaving the party in SC, they are doing so elsewhere, even if it is not publicized.
They may not yet be able to vote in an election to remove Trump, but they are voting with their voices, leaving Trump ever weaker. Eventually, Congressional Republicans must catch up.
7
I'd love to leave the burden of them to get us out of this. But they can't. Once again, Dems have to clean up a GOP mess and then take the blame for it.
11
"But they do have a parachute, one named Mike Pence. The vice president would continue many of Mr. Trump’s policies …"
Mr. Pence is almost certainly a co-conspirator. He participated in the campaign. He attended campaign meetings. He helped with the inauguration. He worked on the transition. He has lied repeatedly.
14
Almost anyone not a die-hard Trump Republican will welcome his removal from office, but, yes, the Republican party does have a bigger problem. While big money, corporations & oligarchs, will always try to do what they do, we expect more from elected officials. The Republican party has shown themselves for what they are and, as the story goes, it was just a negotiation over the price.
It should be at least a generation for the stains of Trump & Republican corruption to fade thus giving the GOP time & opportunity to redeem themselves and actually become defenders of Democracy. But, honestly, were they ever such since Reagan? Their path to today strongly suggests otherwise. And drunk with power the past two years we have seen their disdain for America and Democracy, and their inability to actually govern.
As much as we rail about the Republicans, the saddest part, IMHO, is we let this happen by being asleep at the economic & political wheels. The excellent comments & suggestions made by commenters show the massive tasks ahead to save our democracy and transform our society into one that works for most citizens. And we’re just at the beginning. We can do it, but should realize that we can no longer afford to doze off, that it’s easier to pull the weed while it is small than trying to contain it once it is full-grown and spreading seed.
3
"And yet another might be the prospect that he will lead his party to comprehensive defeat in 2020"
This is the "option" I envisioned with his "win" in 2016. This party destroyed the potential future that most of my generation (a 1950's baby) dreamed about. It is long time that we be rid of their oligarch patrons that have perverted our politics and priorities as a people.
However, unlike Nixon, there must be NO pardons. I want to regain confidence in my government. Prosecute these people and put them in general population Federal prisons...not in the "country club" prisons.
Last comment. You can't be serious that Pence has a place at the head of this party should Individual #1 resign or be impeached. I could only hope that Mueller's investigation finds him complicit in this fraudulent election and fraudulent administration.
14
“To liberals, centrists & conservatives, work for good policies during Trump’s presidency; never lose sight of his unfitness to be president.”
William Kristol, founder/editor The Weekly Standard, 9/14/2017
The death of the Weekly Standard is part and parcel of the political/social direction of the Republican Party since the Goldwater Republicans killed off the Rockefeller Republicans.
Trump is the result of 54 years of the Republican Party pandering to its ultra-conservative wing while pillorying the moderates.
Richard Nixon used his "Southern strategy" to co-opt the Dixiecrats and to attract the formerly "solid South" Democrat working class.
Ronald Reagan made American reactionary conservatism, and racism, safe and attractive. He wasn’t a Bircher or a klansman. His Hollywood charm made it easy and palatable for (too) many to forget or to choose not to see how racist and radical American conservatism had really become.
Trump simply says, and does, what the Republican rank and file has thought and wanted done for the past 50 years, and he gives his supporters an outlet for the years of pent up anger caused by their economic and social decline.
Trump exemplifies, epitomizes and embodies BOTH modern conservatism and the post-Eisenhower Republican Party.
10
Since 90 percent of Republicans still support tRump, I don’t think they’re going to drop him or pressure him to step down. I also don’t have any faith in our system to fix this problem until the Electoral College is abolished and presidents are elected by popular vote. As awful as tRump is, I believe he will be the nominee in 2020 and has a good chance at being re-elected. The Republicans have no spines and will never stand up to him and do the right thing. They would toss out the Constitution before tossing out tRump.
3
It’s not going away(the Electoral College)especially now we’ve seen the importance of it whether we like it. We have to have a message that appeals to them. We have to listen and understand why they are afraid of liberals. You can see it in many of these pages.
1
1. More indictments: 100%.
2. Indication of criminal act by DJT: 90%
3. Economic recession within 2 years: 70%
4. Escalation of trade war with China: 50%
5. No de-nuke deal with North Korea: 100%
6. Russian invasion of Ukraine: 10%
7. New Nafta dies in Congress: 90%
8. No funding for wall: 100%
9. Deterioration of DJT’s behavior: 100%.
10. GOP prospects in 2020 deteriorate: 70%
3
@MTA"
11. Democrats renominate Hillary Clinton: 40%
1
So two practiced toadies come out swinging in their defense of the utterly corrupt morally rudderless GOP that has been undermining the constitution and democracy for over four decades and they think that they don't deserve to be banished to the wilderness if not forever for, at least considerable amount of time. There is no redemption possible for the GOP, they need to be expunged from the body politic forever and a new party respectful of your constitution and democratic principals.
10
"... the most ominous of which would be the discovery of clear criminality by the president or those closest to him ..."
I'm sorry? Did I miss something? Hasn't "Individual 1" already been directly implicated in campaign finance law felonies that might very well have influenced the outcome of the election? Do Rauch and Wehner believe that is only a "process crime?"
6
Mr. Trump did not sneak into the GOP --- begging or pleading! His was a loud and hostile takeover of not only the nomination but the whole GOP, lock, stock and barrel. He mocked and ridiculed the party’s past icons and current leaders with the largest ‘war chests’! His strategy?
He doubled on GOP Conservatism: Deregulation of the Finance Industry, NRA, Misogynist Religiosity and the Southern Strategy. He however rejected GOP’s “Free Trade”, Post-War alliances and the scuttling of the New Deal-Great Society Safety Net. He promised “Medicare For All” (Scottish-Australian Modal), Middleclass Tax Cuts and large “Infrastructure projects”. In power, he broke his promise on Health Care and Taxes. He is partially successful on his other promises --- both good and bad (from a liberal point of view). His anti-intellectual, extra-constitutional and egoist-egotistic style of leadership befits today’s GOP --- made in the image of Trump. Removal of Trump, one way or another, would not remove Trumpism.
Pre-Trump GOP has been vanquished or absorbed into Trumpism. Only the progressive or the Democratic-Socialist wings of a united Democratic Party can end Trumpism and strengthen democracy.
6
Indeed, the most disheartening aspect of the last two years is the utter disregard of the current Republican leadership for the institutions and values that make this country great:
"The most troubling — and from our point of view the most disappointing — development of the Trump era is not the president’s own election and subsequent behavior; it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency. It has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself. And it has embraced presidential conduct that, if engaged in by a Democrat, it would have been denounced as corrupt, incompetent and even treasonous."
6
Please stop talking about Trump leaving office or not running. The country needs him to be on the top of the ticket in 2020 - so that Republicans can lose bigly nationally and in every state. Trump is only the culmination of decades of cynical, lying, racist, trickle-down politics by the party of the 1%. We need a sweep of tsunami proportions in order to have a chance to implement some sane policies to address climate change, inequality, the erosion of democracy, the total disregard of facts and science, etc. Let's just let the Republicans follow him into the abyss.
4
What are you on?
Even if the GOP became inclined to dump Trump people would look at the calendar and see that the next election is not that far down the road and they'd realize that it would be best for the Country and their party to just let this play out.
2
@MIKEinNYC -- you sure sound like a Republican, so perhaps the following is a story you don't know.
Remember Elliot Spitzer? Remember he resigned as gov of NY over a hooker scandal?
His Lt. Gov was David Paterson. He was a nobody ticket-balancer, son of Basil Paterson, Harlem political royalty ... and suddenly he became governor.
He, and the Democrats ... suddenly had a problem. Albany, known to the locals as "Smallbany" ... is a small town. I'm not even politically connected and I knew a lot more about David Paterson and his affaires than I wanted to know.
He and his wife immediately gave a press conference, in which they admitted they had had sex together with "a chauffeur."
Everybody knew that was Donald Johnson, his bad-boy fixer, bag-man, chauffeur on state payroll ...
Democrats knew this would be a disaster -- the only question is whether he could be gotten off stage without too much collateral damage. A Democratic sardonic joke of that moment was to ask "Is Paterson still governor?" Wait 30 seconds after whatever answer you got and ask "Is Paterson still governor?"
Johnson was accused of running a prostitution ring down on the side in the city, and beating up one of the women. She attempted to prosecute, and good ole David made a phone call to threaten her, that she recorded. That was the end of Paterson, and the Democrats actually breathed an enormous sigh of relief.
It's really time for Republicans to start asking "Is Trump still president?"
Republicans should see the writing on the wall and in election results...If they do not do the will of ALL or MOST of the people they will pay the price at election time.
The trump administration is the most unpopular in history and has the worst policy decisions (or lack thereof) that most Americans detest. Pushing policies that degrade the environment, denying Climate change, horrible scape-goating of immigrants, trying to get rid of medical coverage for millions (Obama care), in bed with Russian-Putin while degenerating our own Intelligence & other Government agencies, withdrawing from treaties and agreements that have kept the US safe for decades and not replacing them with anything etc. Younger, more educated voters will not be kind to this insanity in 2020!
3
Its pretty clear the authors are Trump haters, so why not let him fail? If he were that bad, then he could easily be beaten in a 2020, right? Why go through the trouble of coaxing Republicans to remove him, or primary him?
That's the issue at hand. They know he wont be easily beaten, and will probably easily win re-election, given the clown car of candidates so far. Trump is a fighter, and they absolutely hate him for it.
America is doing great under his leadership. The economy is booming. Obama would have killed to have this economy, but we got it by REVERSING Obama policies. ISIS has been defeated, and China is finally getting their comeuppance.
What will Democrat President bring? A reversal back to Obama's policies? That means a stagnant economy, with lower middle class wages, lower growth, and more debt.
No thanks
3
@Sports Medicine -- uh ... I think you don't really believe what you are saying.
There's no likelihood of Trump's approval getting better between now and then; odds are it will get worse, perhaps much worse.
Polls show that 55% of the electorate "absolutely will not vote for Trump." Weird as it sounds, one can construct scenarios where he'd still win the Presidency with that due to the electoral college composition ... but it's really unlikely.
And the bigger problem is the Senate. The Republicans need to hold it, and having a train-wreck of a presidential candidate is not the way to do that.
The senate Republicans increasingly need Trump out to hold the senate.
1
@Sports Medicine
Obama inherited the Bush/Cheney Recession. The economy did fine under Clinton and Obama; jobs created, benefits enhanced, peace after the Iraq fiasco, and a paydown of the Reagan Star Wars debt. The middle class liked both Clinton and Obama; some of them even liked Bush/Cheney and the war to rid Iraq of all those WMD, never found. In the case of the current H.S. dropout, any Democrat who finished H.S., spent some time in college and didn't insult all our neighbors and allies would be welcome.
You mean the longest period of growth during any one administration, buildup up alliances, increased number of people with health insurance, a DROP in illegal immigration, a DROP in the number of abortions, 8 years without anIslamic terrorist attack, moral leadership, decreasing budget deficits dropping interest rates without inflation, and somebody you all can hate? You should love it. All after turning around an incompetently managed crisis.
"By reasserting its institutional prerogatives — by setting limits to the depredations and recklessness it will accept — the Republican Party would be acting to deter hijackers in the future."
When has the Republican party ever acted in this way? By pardoning Nixon, Gerald Ford led the way in rarely letting anyone with an R behind their name get in serious trouble.
3
Between his super ego and the congressional right's, theres not a chance of his quitting nor them throwing him out. Face it: neither party are that responsible in the first place!
1
I won't be happy until we see Trump in an orange jumpsuit by the Interstate, holding a trashbag, working on "infrastructure".
9
@stan continople
Might the "infrastructure" be a Wall? Just asking.
Finally, an article in the NY Times that that openly acknowledges what becomes increasingly inevitable. As the facts (Remember those?) are slowly revealed from the Mueller and Congressional investigations, the Republican Senate majority will find it has no other option to save itself or at least salvage the possibility of winning the Executive Branch in 2020 except by impeaching Trump and opening up the nominating process to someone not currently in the Executive Branch (such as Romney and/or Nikki Haley). The possibility becomes real when it becomes clear to them that the Democrats have no incentive to impeach Trump. Trump is the poster boy for Russian Kakistocracy and Republican corruption. Every day he remains in office is a further guarantee that the Senate will be controlled by Democrats by 2020 or before, if enough Senate Republicans decide their party affiliation is not longer politically tenable. (Senate Republicans have already put party before country and are just as likely to put themselves before party.) They have no desire to save the country but have every desire to save themselves and realize that the Democrats have no desire to save Republicans from themselves. The next six months will be very interesting, indeed.
4
The authors lay out a few things they naïvely assume could introduce conscience to the Republican Party. They don't realize that all of these things have already happened.
1. "...the discovery of clear criminality by the President or those closest to him..." Um... where the bleep have you been the past two years?
2. "...an economic recession." Stock prices and unemployment rates are down, but millions of people who work full time can't afford food. Your economy is about numbers; our economy is about neighbors. Keep pointing to your charts while I take my parents to the food bank because it's not possible to retire anymore.
3. "...mismanagement of a crisis." Puerto Rico. 'Nuff said.
4. "...continued deterioration of the President's behaviour." You should splash some cold water on your face or drink some coffee because this sort of incomprehensibility can only come from serious intoxication.
5. "...the prospect that he will lead his party to comprehensive defeat in 2020..." Because what, a national approval rating in the mid-thirties isn't enough? An approval rating that has never been higher than fifty percent isn't enough? Massive losses in the midterms, even in areas he won in 2016, aren't enough?
All of these things have happened—have been happening—for two years. You are the brilliant allies of your own gravediggers.
14
This authors of this article, much like Trump's fans, are basing their perspective on fantasy rather than the events that are actually happening in real life. The fictional television character of Campaign Trump continues to dominate the narrative, while Real Trump lounges around in bed watching television and eating cheeseburgers.
Americans actually believe there could be a "wall". But the "wall" will never happen. They're stringing up razor wire along the fencing that's already been built (which has already been perforated with tunnels,) and then they're calling it a day.
Americans actually believe Trump is defeating China. But he's playing into China's hands, and China is winning.
Americans actually believe Trump is going to end some of our wars. But all we've seen so far is talk. Bolton and Jared are running the show, and their approach to foreign policy is a lot closer to W. Bush than to Campaign Trump. We've given concessions to Kim and forked over wheelbarrows full of cash to the Taliban, but we haven't inched closer to peace. And now we're on the verge of invading Venezuela.
What about the actual, concrete, real-world results of Trump's presidency? They're exactly the same as what any other Republican would have accomplished. Tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, environmental deregulation, and hundreds of law-school dropouts appointed as judges in order to enact new regulations over women's bodies.
The GOP has Trump wrapped around its finger.
4
Interesting analysis.
It's asking a lot of Republicans in office, who have to win a primary where 90 percent of their primary voters are cultists, to do the right thing when it counts. Unless a majority of Republican voters turn on Trump, which seems unlikely given Trump understands them quite well when he said that he could shoot somebody on 5th Avenue and they'd still support him, we are probably stuck with Trump until January 2021.
This is sad, because one of the main arguments for having a republic instead of a direct democracy is that when times get tough, representatives will be the adults and make the right decisions even if they aren't always the most popular ones and thus preclude mob rule. This was in the minds of Madison and others when they designed a government wherein only one half of one of three relatively co-equal branches of government was actually chosen directly by citizen voters.
There's ample evidence that Trump's removal could yield better outcomes in a wide variety of ways than leaving him in office until the next election. I want to believe that elected Republicans can and will do the right thing, but I can't. Even though change can and often does happen non-linearly and quickly, as with Nixon, the misinformation environment is so much more advanced and more powerful now as to make a reprise of 1974 a lot less likely.
Regardless of when Trump goes, we have to wonder how much damage will be done, and how will we avoid another like him.
3
I disagree with the analysis - I believe elected Republicans will put preservation of personal career above the best interests of the party and will never turn on Trump if they can in any way avoid doing so. The backlash of Trump's base against defectors will only increase in frenzy as his position becomes more precarious.
5
Trumps support seems like what’s left of a snow mound at winters end, a compressed hardened core of ice that will soon succumb to a warm spring rain.
6
I read this this morning and haven't weighed in until now. No doubt it's been said somewhere else.
But Republicans will never agree to the best ways to ensure there is no repeat of this Presidency.
The first is to ensure that everyone eligible to vote can do so, easily and painlessly.
The second is to turn all drawing of district lines to professional, independent commissions. No politicians need apply.
Republicans, with their current beliefs and in their current incarnation, only win elections because of grievous abuses of both these premises.
I find it unbelievable that these two things are not a sacred trust in the USA in 2019.
6
Oh, please. People have been saying this kind of thing since 2016. All that's needed is for Republicans to stand up, or find their spine, or stand on their principles, or whatever, and we will be rid of Trump. It ain't gonna happen. Republicans will never turn on him because, deep down, they like what he is and what he is doing. Besides, turning on him would be giving a huge political and moral victory to Democrats, and every Republican I know would rather watch the country burn than do that. Personally, I hope Trump stays in office for his full term and gets beaten by a huge margin in 2020, and in so doing takes the entire Republican Party down with him. House, Senate, White House, more governors, more state houses, more city councils, all Democratic in 2020.
5
You left out the fact that all citizens are starting to feel the real effects of the Trump tax cut which, regardless of what he says, was a cut for the rich at the expense of the middle class. Money talks... as they say.
2
The republicans have done a superb job of alienating nearly every thinking American all over the world.
As California goes, so goes the country and California's republican party is now entirely irrelevant in this state. It is highly unlikely to recover in my lifetime or my children's lifetime; maybe never.
4
"Trump’s removal by his party would be at least as healthy, democratically speaking: It would reinvigorate the idea that political parties exist not just as vehicles for politicians but as protectors of vital democratic norms."
But that is exactly what has not happened. The GOP has been complicit in the erosion of all our vital democratic norms. Therefore, the GOP is killing our democracy by supporting Trump, and yet, despite their own words to the contrary, the authors still believe in the GOP. Remarkable. This point to a deep emotional attachment to the GOP that is clouding the rational thinking of Rauch and Wehner.
8
"In the long run, a third or so of the country cannot effectively govern the other two-thirds with an unpopular agenda and a Twitter account". Well, actually, it can. It's called the Electoral College and we're stuck with it.
7
Seems likely the National Enquirer holds compromising material on a good many GOP politicians. Given the depth of treasonous activity from figures close to the Trump Administration, maybe they have gotten it from Russian intelligence operatives.
This would constitute a threat to national security that should certainly be addressed by the FBI.
6
I place this opinion piece in the same dust bin as the opinion piece in October 2016 that opined that Hillary could win Texas.
Some Republicans are upset with Trump. Just as some were upset, in 1904, that Teddy Roosevelt was their nominee for re-election. If my recollection of history is accurate, the only sitting President seeking re-election who was denied the nomination of his party was Millard Fillmore.
1
I think some writers who look at Trexit as an either or proposition- either impeaching him or voting him out - are missing the point. If the House impeaches Trump there will be a concrete indictment laid out not only before the Senate but before the American people. It is not beyond possibility that this initial attempt will be successful in one way or the other, if the Senate Republicans view Trump as more of a threat to them than his partisans. If conventional wisdom prevails and he is not successfully impeached, a clear case for why he should be defeated will be laid out separate from the myriad of views of the huge cavalry charge of Democratic candidates vying to unseat him.
1
Is trump really much worse on domestic policy and the environment, taxes, deregulation than Rubio,or Cruz ,or Bush 3 might have been? Would they have been better on voting rights? The Paris Accord? Judges? Not to mention women's rights, labor, wages. I think not.
3
If America is looking towards Republicans like Trump and his cronies to get us out of the current mess then the picture on this article speaks a thousand words.
5
Poor Mr. Rauch and Wehner. So highly educated and pedigreed, working for a prestigious think tank. Thinkers. Observers. Analysts.
...Yet embarrassingly out of touch with the present day. Their frame of reference is still Late 20th Century.
They have chosen to define current political theater as "Republicans vs Democrats"......I assume because they accurately observed that Trump ran on the Repub Ticket.
But here's whats blatantly obvious. The type of Republicans that listen to Brookings Institute ...are exactly the republicans that are ATTACKING Trump... Mueller, Rosenstein, the Bush Family, and every other nominally republican high level bureaucrat.
This is because Trump has made a calculation....he appeals NOT to party membership....but to Americans.
I understand this is difficult for the Brookings Crowd to grasp....but grasp it they must or their own irrelevance only increases.
2
@Wherever Hugo
Are the members of the Brookings Institute French? Italian? German? I didn't vote for Trump, although I did believe I was an American when I voted. It would be so helpful if you could define "American" for the rest of us.
2
@Linda Miilu ... Thanks for the interest in my comment... but I think you completely misunderstood my point. That being....classifying americans as democrat and/or republican is no longer relevant....Trump understands this...Brookings "expert analysts" do not. In fact, your own confusion and anger with Trump is also a direct result of your own insistence on classifying the political debate as "dem vs repub" and "liberal vs conservative"............ obsolete reference points.
You say that "In democracies, sick political parties usually need years in the wilderness before they can heal. " That healing means a turnover of the "old school;" retirement and death and election of young, vibrant progressive people.
But, as the Buddhists say, "All Things Are Impermanent" and change and we have a strong new group of younger people including the block of new women who can start the "healing" as you call it. The Dem Party is moribund.
Let the healing begin.
50 years ago the Republican Party created the Southern Strategy, the conscious effort to appeal to the segregationist Strom Thurmond and George Wallace Democratic voters.
In the 1980’s the Republican Party gave us the culture wars and Reagan and the dog whistle politics of welfare queens and States Rights and created the Reagan Democrats.
In the 1990’s we got the Newt Gingrich House of Representatives take no prisoners confrontation, the Clinton impeachment, Whitewater, and Vince Foster murder conspiracy.
With Obama, they created the Tea Party and gave us the birthers, death panels, and support of the Confederate flag.
They coopted Christians with abortion instead working to get women birth control.
And all these years, the Republican politicians have been using the Reaganomics talking points of small government and tax cuts for the job creators coming from the right-wing think tanks.
For thirty five years, the rising tide of Trickle Down Reaganomics has mostly helped the wealthy at the expense of the rest.
And the Republican establishment is sick, just sick I tell you, to think of Trump representing the Republican Party.
They can’t understand how the Republican voters, who have been losing their manufacturing jobs all these years as Mitt Romney and his Wall St. colleagues sent those jobs to China, these same voters who have been listening to talk radio and Fox all these years, how they can blindly follow Trump and not listen to reason.
13
It’s demoralizing to watch our democracy being trampled by President Trump and Congressional Republicans without being able to personally intercede and protect it.
4
@Sunny
can you please point to example of our democracy being trampled on? i assume you have at least 1 you can share
@think - Yes I do. Here are two examples that come to mind.
(1) Both Trump & the Republicans questioned the legitimacy of the midterm results, spreading conspiracy theories of forged ballots & undocumented aliens voting to explain why they lost so many seats to the Democrats.
(2) Many Republicans favor power over democratic principle, as seen in their recent assaults on electoral fairness. Do the terms gerrymandering and voter suppression ring a bell?
7
Republicans loved Richard Nixon right up until the day he resigned -- and beyond. Many of them later admitted that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was payback for Watergate.
Without a Democratic majority in 1973 and now in the House in 2019, Republicans would do absolutely NOTHING to remove a corrupt, traitorous president who is weakening America -- as long as they get their tax cuts, their military spending, and their SCOTUS confirmations.
8
The reason DJT enjoys 90% support of his base is because he is solely responsible for the greatest economy in the world and the greatest this country has ever seen - BUNK.
The reason for the 90% support is because he is going to get us out of never ending wars, never mind the military-industrial complex - BUNK.
The reason for the 90% support is because he gave them R-E-S-P-E-C-T which the liberals would never give - BUNK.
There is only one reason: he is against the browning of America. He is going to stop it by building a wall.
The old Republican orthodoxy will stop Trump: dream on.
8
“The [Republican] party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency.” True, and lucid, like the rest of this excellent essay.
But for decades those core Republican Party commitments have appeared not as end ideals. Rather those commitments appear as means to decidedly less-altruistic and more self-serving ends. This same Republican Party has also long embraced discredited “trickle-down” economic theory, regressive taxes, global-warming denial, and dog-whistle race-bating, also as means to self-serving ends.
Donald Trump is a natural, perhaps inevitable, cartoon caricature of the meanest means and basest ends that Republicans have championed for decades.
“In democracies, sick political parties usually need years in the wilderness before they can heal,” the authors wrote in closing. Get well one of these decades soon, Republican Party!
2
This article completely ignores the fact that regardless of the figurehead or party, the leaders of political usa are simply doing as they are told by the ruling corporatocracy.
2
@Eric Martens
It's called a plutocracy,a government by and for big business.
3
Republicans? To paraphrase Grover Norguist, a once famous and often quoted Republican, the GOP voters who are against Trump has been reduced "to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Did anyone see the 2016 GOP Presidential Primaries?
There is no more GOP. It's now the party of Trump.
He's the leader that 80 to 90 percent of GOP voters always wanted.
And now they have him.
6
Every trump supporter I know has something "off" about him.
That is his base, and that is why he will inevitably fail, and be forgotten.
7
@d. stein
And his base won't be any better off tomorrow than they are today, they will still be sitting on their couch whining about how brown people stole their jobs, that were in fact outsourced to China, Mexico, any "labor friendly" country. Why do you think GM is laying off 15,000 US workers, but expanding capacity in Mexico, could it be the $3.00 an hour without benefits that GM finds so alluring.
2
The Republican Party got us into this mess, but it will take more than them to get us out of it. What was supposed to be impossible, they made possible by not properly vetting the likes of Donald J. Trump. What was improbable was made problematic by FOX and the National Enquirer, the two forms of media that secured his candidacy. What was unimaginable is that after two years, all these charges against his advisors and associates, the Republican Party is still supporting him, as well as his base. Yet, it is highly probable that he was in on the criminal conspiracy with Russian's interfering in our elections and that he and many Republicans in leadership were paid through the NRA. Now, we pray that our Constitution and democracy will hold against the forces of darkness and that liberty, freedom and justice for all will reign in America once again. There is the strong possibility that history will record this administration as the most corrupt ever. May justice be served. The day of reckoning is coming.
20
@GraceNeeded
Every other network was bashing Trump but Fox, but because of there mere existence, that's why Trump won?
So we needed 100% of the media to bash Trump in order for Hillary to win?
Do you really believe that?
1
"the most ominous of which would be the discovery of clear criminality by the president or those closest to him (including family members)"
This has already happened. "Individual 1" in the Cohen guilty plea is the President. More is needed since the only public facing information we have is Cohen's testimony in his plea. But no US DA would allow this language in an plea if they didn't have ironclad evidence to back it up. So proof that the President is guilty of a felony is only a matter of time.
Also it is clear from public information and his sworn testimony that Donald Trump Jr. did purger himself before congress, which is also a felony.
So the discovery of criminality is a forgone conclusion. It only remains for the Special Council to finish his investigation and make his report in order to formalize what is already known. And it strains credulity to assume that this is all of the direct criminal activity by the President and his family that Robert Mueller has.
6
I do not care for the President's temperament; I do approve of a number of his actions which have benefited us all - jobs growth, deregulation, renegotiating of trade treaties, appointment of intelligent justices and respecting innocent life. I am not so sure of his overall foreign policy actions however. As for this article, it stems from an abject hatred for the man personally. The authors are afraid of Trump so they have changed tactics - maybe the Republicans will remove him for their own good. What a transparent and phony position. Democrats have provided more than their fair share of corruption during our political history which they seem to ignore due to cognitive dissonance. So grow up, pick a better candidate and win in 2020. PS - none of your candidates so fair has a brain, find someone else and I'll consider them.
5
@Bob obviously Bob you are old and have no children if you consider all the increases in pollution of air and water this governement is encouraging to be benefits. No animal sheets where it eats and sleeps except man, ironically doing so for short term comfort in exchange for long term and permanent discomfort. Any person with progeny who approves of sheeting where we eat, breathe and live is selfish beyond the pale.
4
@Bob
LOL, like trump has done anything. He inherited a good economy with job growth. His deregulations are going to hurt the environment and thus people as it poisons them.
Renegotiate trade agreements, it is only 1 so far and that merely duplicates what NAFTA already did. It made no improvements.
Intelligent judges, no, extremely biased judges who will continue to help the rich get richer. What about the innocent minorities who will suffer at the hands of the hate from those judges?
The major problem isn't that Trump is bad and that so and so would be better. The problem is that party lines have grown to thick. Either side is willing to cut of their nose to spite their face. Left and right just want to pump up their respective sides and will say or do whatever it takes to get re-elected. Neither side wants what's best for the people, they want what's best for themselves. I consider myself a conservative, but definitely don't find my values or wants lining up with many of the things Republicans are doing right now. Why lower taxes and then increase spending, that's one of the worst ideas that I can think of. The Democrats keep calling for social programs, some of them are great, but many of them don't make sense to me. Why would you want a portion your paycheck to paycheck to help pay your neighbors rent or other expenses. Likewise, why would you expect your neighbor to be ok with helping pay your bills? What this country needs is a political reset back to when both parties actually worked together for the good of the country.
Remember that in a democracy; it's not up to the government to support it's people, but up to a people to support their government.
3
Trump supporters still don't understand a basic premise of science: correlation does not necessarily equal causation. Just because Trump is president and unemployment is low doesn't mean he is a job creator. Just because Trump is president and gas prices are low doesn't mean Trump reduced them. Our booming economy is happening despite Trump's presence in the White House, not because of him. Until his supporters recognize this, their loyalty will remain unshakeable.
20
I'm sure most Trump supporters understand the laughable ways that both Democrats and Republican politicians claim credit for economic prosperity...But, when the economy inevitably spins down they get the blame too.. It is true that lumping all of Trumps supporters in one despicable, unredeemable basket is hypocritical, somewhat ignorant and quite tribal. This kind of elitist, "we know best", attitude from his detractors is what will re-elect him.
Dream on.
3
trump is his own man and he has gotten by, by as a racist bully. He makes his own rules and then changes the rules as he goes to benefit himself with no regard for the offended party.
The authors write that "Short of outright resignation or removal, he could suffer enough defections so that he might announce he will not seek re-election."
That would not be in his nature; he is a fighter until the last. Putin's contingency plan is to work toward getting trump re-elected. Do not underestimate this pair.
Meanwhile, the Republican party has managed to impose voter suppression laws in many states and continue disenfranchising tactics of close poling places, changing hours of operation while emboldened racists take it upon themselves to "govern" the queues in order to intimidate minority voters.
trump himself has intimated that he believes he should serve 16 yrs. He has applauded Xi on his changing the rules so he can stay in power, suggesting that "maybe we will try that one day."
trump is testing his "emergency power" throttle with the wall. The greater test will be when he declares a national voter fraud emergency and pushes to have the elections postponed "until we can be sure our voters are legal." How many years will that take?
The Democrats need to tread firmly and pick their battles carefully. If people believe trump unnecessarily hounded, that, coupled with Russian interference, could turn the election into four more years of living hell.
9
Wishful thinking
4
Vote.
4
What mess?
You mean the messy booming stock market?
The messy ultra-low unemployment rate?
The messy no wars?
6
@Jerome
Stealing from the poor to give to the rich? Short term, it's kind of working. But it is the Obama recovery, and most are not earning a living wage.
As the shutdown demonstrated, way too many people are living paycheck to paycheck. Decent jobs with benefits are going the way of the dodo while top salaries go up and up and up.
Value is being removed from the economy.
And how do you like Trump's treachery as he answers to his financiers, the Russian mob and MBS? His besties are the world's dictators.
11
Frankly, I do not want to see clemency offered to Trump or his family. It would be just another example of the him escaping responsibility in a lifetime spent avoiding his due comeuppance.
26
The writers have a false premise. Roughly half of Americans aware enough to vote don't see the Trump regime as a "mess." Try as the rest of us might to describe a mess, they see only a man who represents their values, beliefs and interests, who "tells it like it is" and is being persecuted, on their behalf. They remain unconvinced that his misdeeds before and since his election are worse than those of any other politician.
7
@abigail49
Roughly 1/3, and they are being taught from the cradle that nothing is more evil than a Democrat (not child molesters, even). Your witness: Roy Moore.
They don't care about living children and families, only fetuses. I'd suggest a good reading of the Gospels. Jesus would have nothing to do with whited sepulchers, casters of first stones, crossers of the road (the good samaritan). Hypocrisy is not spirituality, and greed is not Christian. Predation and victim blaming are not Christian.
And voter suppression and cheating: apparently voting for every citizen is a "power grab". Democrats won by nearly 10% across the board, but many states are still in the hands of Republicans, thanks to 40 years of careful intimidation and tactics such as crosscheck.
Fewer and fewer people make a living wage these days while the bought and paid for congressional Republicans continue to loot and exploit.
Destroying our earth, air, and water or profit is not good for children and other living things.
18
The writers state that the President is, "a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself." This was on full display Tuesday night. For as much of the speech as I watched, the President got endless standing ovations from the Republicans in attendance. I admit I took the lead of the young boy in the gallery that shares the same last name as the President and fell asleep. The ovations seemed sincere. The take away for me was that the Republicans are quite fine with supporting a pathological liar as long as that support wins them election in their home states. Conscience has been relegated to the category of an irritant and to be ignored for now. They still have the courts to stack.
12
@Richard Weiner. Two different polls - one by CNN and one by CBS- both indicated 72 percent of those that watched the SOTU speech gave it positive marks. Not exactly in line with your assessment.
This is one of the best most insightful commentaries I've read so far about Trump's possible future. One minor complaint is that Nancy Nance Pelosi seems to get all the credit for the end of the govt. shutdown. Actually increasing air traffic problems and delays up and down the east coast and related safety issues caused by shortage of air traffic controllers had more to do with the end of the shutdown than Nance. Even fancy mom has has her own cult.
2
Seriously? There is still such a thing as the Republican center right?
7
President Gerald Ford let Nixon go without a trial. President Obama let GWBush go without a trial. Shouldn't we have a Nuremberg equivalent to face justice as we did after World War II? Let's take it a step further beyond trump and past presidents. Shouldn't we have a Truth and Reconciliation about slavery, race and lynching as South Africa did after apartheid was defeated? How about a Truth and Reconciliation towards Native Americans? We need to acknowledge, ask for forgiveness, and then begin to right the wrongs going forward.
7
Trump is a unique problem in our Political system.
His base is enough to keep him buoy in any political backlash but his base is really not enough to govern America.
His base is a also falling behind and Trump in terms of fundamental level, is not doing anything to solve their problems.
Trump also makes rich , more rich with tax cuts.
However he create big fuss about immigration and carry out as an national emergency , that didn't sit well majority of America.
Trump is a political cancer , no cure available, GOP if doesn't act timely , is facing a certain death.
8
And then there is the medical option with a little help from God... he is high risk of a myocardial infarction or stroke-- since he is non-compliant with his cholesterol medication and diet (hopefully, still eating those left over burgers from Clemson meet and greet). His exam and labs today, will tell if this is possible. He is 72, if his LDL cholesterol is still 143, with his sedentary tweeting lifestyle and eating nightly cheeseburgers he is well on his way to that MI. After which he will have good excuse to quit and avoid jail time.
10
You vastly overestimate the patriotism, integrity, and spine of the current Republican leadership.
10
Based on the demographics of the typical Republican voter, they have demonstrated for years that they will vote against their own best interests. Most Red States receive much more in government subsidies than they contribute.
So, in lieu of these facts, why would anyone assume that they would turn on Trump. They are like blind lemmings: ready to stay with him right over the cliff.
7
"If some combination of criminality, incompetence or crisis moves the center-right against the president, his end could come quickly. If that happens, Mr. Trump might step down to avoid impeachment, particularly if he were promised clemency for himself and his family."
No unearned clemency.
8
"In any event, the Republican gamble that the party can ride out the Trump era without suffering tremendous damage is looking worse every day."
You can say that again, and I think you did, several times. The Republican Party has to get its electoral teeth knocked in (again) and spend a political hiatus in the deep wilderness if it has any chance of surviving into the future. And who's to say if that's even possible, when a majority of Republican pols embrace the religious based anti-reason that is climate science denial, blind faith in extremist rapacious capitalism, and ideas like Trump was chosen by God? Where do you go from so far out there, to here? I'd almost like to give the R's the Confederate fare thee well: Good luck, and good riddance.
5
Even if Republicans finally decide to do what is so obviously right and evict Trump from office, our polity will still be sullied and broken. By doing this, they will have shown that they can learn only during the most extreme duress; after Trump, they will still resort to their feckless pandering to the ultra-rich as they did post-Watergate.
Their policies are not based on what is good for the country as a whole, e.g. a healthy middle class with purchasing power, but are intended to further the interests of an American aristrocracy who can dictate to and control the commoners, especially those of color.
5
Messrs. Wehner and Rauch suggest the Republican Party should oust Donald Trump in order to ‘defend our democracy, not weaken it.’
But ‘defending our democracy’ is not a goal of the Republican Party at all, is it?
Does transparently manipulative gerrymandering and voter suppression ‘defend our democracy,’ sirs?
Does scapegoating minorities and immigrants ‘defend our democracy’?
How about perpetuating a health care system that puts care out of reach for millions of Americans, and leaves all but the wealthiest among us at risk of financial ruin in the event of an accident, a serious illness, or simply the inevitable onslaught of the symptoms of old age?
Or enacting massive tax cuts for the wealthy, predicated on the outright lie that such cuts will ‘pay for themselves,’ thereby exacerbating already toxic income and wealth inequality and blowing the federal deficit sky high?
Mitch McConnell, who has a penchant for shoving his foot in his mouth, recently came up with a whopper: Republicans consider proposals to make Election Day a holiday - so workers could get to the polls without loss of income or even risking the loss of their jobs - a ‘power grab.’ Indeed. The Republican Party considers anything that would permit free and fair elections a ‘power grab.’ Perish the thought that more Americans might be able to vote; because the Republican strategy of playing the system to allow a right wing minority to lord it over the progressive majority of America would be toast.
10
"A fourth would be the continued deterioration of the president’s behavior." I'm betting on that one. I had the SOTU on only in the background, waiting to hear the shouting if Mr. Trump turned and tried to throttle Speaker Pelosi (as she did to him, figuratively). Not this time, but just wait.
2
I hope I am not out of line in saying this, but the 2 authors -- strong players in the Think Tank world -- are incredibly naive. There are no responsible elements in the GOP, only sycophants. Republicans may be worried, but they are zipping up their mouths and ideas as if the president was Caligula and they are being asked to make his horse a senator. If the authors left their safe space in the Think Tanks and got out into the world, they probably would be affected by this GOP disease and come back to the office with MAGA hats.
5
A bully goes down when one of the bullied finally stands up to him in a meaningful way (i.e. not by hedging or quitting first). Trump has already made the mistake that most bullies make, which is demonstrating that loyalty only goes one way to a sufficient quorum of (fearful) supporters. Let the chips fall where they may; my grade school experience tells me that the ship may yet turn
6
100% agreement with this essay. Conservatism ain't what it used to be. Stop being weak, man up and step up Republicans. Show that you still have principles.
5
@NRA,how can they? They all drank the same Kool-Aid. I still don’t understand how all those whites only republicans joined the cult. They are supposed to be well educated, not. Can’t be suckered, not. Country over party, not.
Now they are desperate. Local issues become national issues, as they scramble for any ounce of righteousness. But the nation now knows how shallow the Republican Party has become.
He might step down to avoid impeachment? Seriously? What world have you been living in for two-plus years? Such a naive thing to say. He'd declare a state of emergency to stop the proceedings, because in his tiny mind, he thinks that would work. He might start a war, he will certainly goad his cult followers to commit violent acts against immigrants and any non-whites. He'll do the unthinkable. He loves fighting because he doesn't experience any other emotion but anger. It's his sustenance and he has a deep well to draw from.
6
@steve, when everyone says he loves a fight, like he’s not a coward. He loves to sue, because that’s what rich people can do to the the poor, and it’s other people that fight for him, because he holds the purse strings and the power. Four deferments! No he has never been in a fight.
Re "Indeed, the Trump paradox is that his support deepens among his most persistent admirers even as it erodes everywhere else. "
This is really no paradox; it's human nature. A large swath of America now views politics in the same way it views professional sports. Trump might be a loser, but the's THEIR loser.
3
I feel zero hope. That Falwell crowd is scary.
8
Rauch and Wehner skirt a key reason why Republicans cling to Donald Trump despite his being clearly unfit for office and a national security threat. Trump is an extraordinarily effective front for the Republican oligarchy, giving it tax reductions, regulatory rollbacks, and a compliant judiciary. In addition his ability to utilize culture wars staples such as fear, grievance, and religious bigotry provides the oligarchy with relatively low-cost, socially-acceptable appeals to a segment of the public open to arguments that the stress bedeviling them originates from a malignant "other", not from structural conditions fostered by the oligarchy. To the extent Trump's past may include money laundering, financial entanglement with Russian criminals, or illegal activities with the Russian government the American oligarchy sees it as a personal matter. The principal concern is that he will mismanage a crisis; getting us into a war with Iran as a favor to Israel may provoke serious consequences for the economy, NATO, or other relationships. As Republican I am well aware that among the Party powerful there are 2 key debates. First, to what extent has Trump delivered on the key priorities of the oligarchy......if it has 80 percent of what it wants what is the probability stretching his reign for the last 20 percent is worth the risk of disaster? Second, what is the probability that in the absence of Trump Pence can hold the Presidency? If Trump's ouster preserves power he's gone.
2
So 90% of the GOP are racists, misogynists and corrupt. What a surprise that is not. They are the ones with Russian money ties or ties to billionaire and trillionaire PAC donors trying desperately to run America on their own and without the majority. Run America for themselves and into the ground. Many are so old they don't care about sounding the death knell of the GOP and some of them are probably just as demented and unhinged as Trump.
9
Well done! I love Trexit (Trump Exit).
However, I take issue with the idea that while Democrats would be accused of Treason in the same circumstances, there's only a "maybe" about the Trump organization Treason.
Treason it is, and not just with his financiers the Russian mob and MBS, and his besties the world's dictators, but in his shutdown which has done untold harm. It's time all those people got paid, and also the contractors who have no recourse.
Why the stock market is not tanking is beyond me. Surely the world's top banksters and corporate looters and greedsters can see that they too will suffer in the long run as they support useless luxury markets and removing value from the economy, paying themselves beyond dreams of avarice and reducing the wages for not just unskilled but skilled labor below a living wage. Today on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, a teacher said she is paid about $30,000 a year. That's less than $15/hour. We need universal quality public education and that means stopping the extreme income inequality between public and private schools (including charter schools who all too often game the system).
Then there's the climate. Obvious to anyone paying attention, things are going haywire fast. Does it have to come to your dooryard and destroy your home and livelihood before you abandon your prejudices and acknowledge reality? We can make it less bad: it's too late to address the big fossil predation of the past. Time to go forward.
9
Trump being removed by the people would be a reassertion of the resilliance of American Democracy and the desire for a responsive government. Substituitng Vice President Pence does nothing to change the policies as well as the embedded corruption of an American political system that is dominated by money and unaccountably corrupt activity.
It was not President Trump who made Congress less respected uesd car dealers. What's needed is not a maneuver that distracts from the inherent corruption of political finance, but an assertion by the people that "we're angry as hell, and we won't take it any more,"
8
I have, for a long while hoped for exactly this dawning realization by the right: Trump is not helping their cause.
The key point here, which has for too long conservatives have allowed to mislead them, is that Trump’s support is large but not large enough to overwhelm his craziness. This piece provides the justification that, if R’s have any sense of self-preservation, will not ignore. They are running out of time to get on the right side of history, but the clock is ticking.
Look back on the coverage of the Watergate mess, and consider the winners and losers of that fiasco from the perspective of history, not simply from the everyday chaos of worrying about the next election. It has seemed to me for a long time now that if R’s have any concern for both their party and their country, they would pull the trigger on the Trump Era sooner rather than later.
7
Gentlemen, I wish I shared your optimism about the prospect of the GOP turning on trump.
But IMHO, in spite of the GOP's probable behind-closed-doors revulsion of trump (in contrast to their public wholehearted support), they are stuck between a rock and a hard place: between living with a vulgar dud of a president and throwing him in the political gutter where he belongs.
Either way might spell political oblivion for the GOP, but cutting loose from trump might well be a much faster road to that unhappy place.
For if the GOP sends trump packing, he is likely to have a major tantrum and form a new political party (the MAGA party? more likely the trump party) and take his Kool-Aid-drinking cult with him. That would leave the GOP with the support of... 5% of the public? 10%?
Thus they may judge the less-bad path to be sticking with trump. In the worst-case scenario (excluding the he-won't-leave Bill Maher talks about, which seems a lot less far-fetched than it used to) trump will be in the political rear view mirror in 6 years. Then the GOP can try to put the past behind them without losing 90% of their base.
4
"In any event, the Republican gamble that the party can ride out the Trump era without suffering tremendous damage is looking worse every day."
This section here is most disheartening to me. So their main consideration is the survival of the party, not the country?
We, or the Republicans, have forgotten political parties are only a means to an end -- of self government, not an end to themselves. Once elected, they represent all Americans, not just the party that elected them.
But chastising the Republican Party is futile because they really are the iceberg and Trump just the tip. Trump is the Frankenstein they created and continue to feed; not just because they are beholden to Trump's 90% favorability rating among Republican base, but because this is the kind of person they are.
11
Thank you Mr. President. Thank you for Making America Great. Thank you for Keeping America Safe. Thank you for taking the tough stance to make America the preeminent global economic and military power again.
1
@Brewster Millions
Making America Small and Mean.
Shutting down at the cost of billions.
Treason. Blaming victims. Treating mothers and children badly, while supporting fetuses at any cost.
Buddying up to the Russian Mob, MBS, and the world's dictators.
Cheating in elections.
Living wages going the way of the dodo while the top guys laugh all the way to the bank.
There, fixed that for you.
14
@Brewster Millions
Thank you for tearing up treaties that abate nuclear proliferation. I’ve always regarded the movie Dr. Strangelove as a patriotic message.
Thank you for obtaining over 40 more “Trump” licenses in China and having your sweatshops there where the employees have to fill a quota and work piecemeal instead of for an hourly wage. I wish I could do that so I can make less than my local paper boy under those conditions!
I’ve always wanted to get arrested at work for complaining about it like your employees in China actually have experienced.
Thank you for giving Russia’s farmers our business when it comes to China now buying pork, soy, and many other products we used to sell to them.
We are delighted that some farmers have earned not much more than ahill of beans, thanks to the idea Putin has oh, I mean that you have of a Trade War.
Thank you for the upswing in hate crimes by white supremacists – and really it is thanks to you 0while you go on and on about your campaign promise for a wall. Didn’t you also ramble on about heathcare that would be cheaper than anything and cover everybody?
Like no one has ever see before. (And never will.) Oh, thank you!
Thank you for being the first president to have a lawsuit filed against you by a porn star.
I also really loved your Access Hollywood Bus reveal. Oh, thank you!
Can I be a guest at your next meeting with Putin? I want to thank your boss too.
Additionally, republicans having realized long ago that they can NOT win elections fairly, have fostered and invested heavily in as many forms of voter suppression that they can get away with. Including endless claims of “voter fraud” (which is in FACT minuscule in the USA). Trump’s extremely close electoral collage “victory” was aided and abetted by that. The 30+ year republican “long game” of taking over state legislatures via backing from extremist CONservatives like Koch Bros and Mercer’s in order to gerrymander voting districts and control judicial appointments is well documented. Worse, it has proven successful.
Endless lies about voter fraud and immigrants, cheating any way they can, then getting “Citizens United” passed (the bush v gore WRONG decision by a demonstrably partisan republican Supreme Court, among other bad decisions PROVES that the Republican Party and especially it’s “Leaders” are NOT fit to govern.
But without an OVERWHELMING Democratic voter TURNOUT the republican gamed system can enable their CONtinued CONtrol. And third party candidates running will only help trump and republicans by siphoning votes. Fools who throw away their vote on third party candidates (Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, Ralph Nader, Ross Perot) all ended up helping the republicans they profess to oppose. Time to wake up and VOTE Democrats in at all levels. It’s the only way in our flawed two-party system.
10
Is it possible that there are college-educated Republicans in Red States making enough money to feel the pinch that is ahead as we prepare our taxes? One can hope. Financial pain at home may the only thing that wakes some of that 90% out of their happy dazes.
New York Republicans with incomes and mortgages who have contemplated their 2018 Income Tax Returns are of interest.
Will April's truths bring comprehension that they are footing the bill, and that their "tax reform" is just one of the more obvious ways they have been duped? Higher tax bills with nothing to show for it but larger egos. No improved infrastructure, better schools, cleaner environment, better national security, no investment in our shared futures. What are we getting in return for this gutting of our national institutions?
Let's revisit these polls on April 16th, when we're all freshly fleeced and feeling it, feeling something in common.
8
“In the long run, a third or so of the country cannot effectively govern the other two-thirds with an unpopular agenda and a Twitter account.”
The long run could be long indeed and a profound and protracted disaster for America.
“The United States has only two major political parties, and it needs both to be healthy, rational and small-d democratic. They are our system’s most durable and accountable political institutions and they comprise its first and most important line of defense against political demagogues and conscience-free charlatans.”
This binary arrangement has profoundly polarized, divided, and perverted our politics into two profoundly opposing camps. This is very much the genesis for the current political morass of dogged partisan warfare and the dominance of an entrenched winner-take-all imperative.
That some spontaneous reformation will come from within this skewed and pernicious condition seems highly improbable. The astronomical stakes and spoils embedded our political process, especially at the national level, make this all the more unlikely.
3
Trump gave the Republican Party what it has wanted, and more: upward transfer of wealth, free rein to corporations and finance, looting of public lands and the commonwealth itself, rollback of even the most modest protections of civil rights, the normalization of division and hatred, a drumbeat of war and militarization, and an abandonment of any project that aims for a better American future. What's not to like?
On the other hand, now that he has delivered the goods, they can discard him, right?
9
@jonnorstog
Agree: the tax heist in favor of corporations and the rich is permanent. The tax "gift" to the rest of us, $600/yr., will sunset in 2027. We will pay higher taxes for the trillion dollar deficit created by corporate the tax gift. Now we have another businessman wanting to be President; he will be another Nader type spoiler syphoning potential Independents and some Democrats. We need to stop thinking of government as a business; it is not. Government is to establish and to maintain an equitable social and financial structure for all of us. Government is there to ensure that our air and water are not polluted by industrial by-products. Government is there to protect us from predators at home or abroad. Good governance does not support a plutocratic takeover of the levers of power. It requires that we elect honest and decent public servants to both Federal and State offices. We can accomplish that through public financing of elections. Repeal Citizens United which defines corporations as "individuals"; they are not. They are entities set up to protect Boards of Directors from shareholders. Scalia left this mess and an honest Congress must repeal it. Thomas and Alito cannot fight an honest Congress. Roberts won't want his legacy to reflect blatant corruption in the Federal government. Don't be cowed by bullies like McConnell; he's just a tougher bully than the whimp in the WH. If we can't defeat Hannity and Coulter, God help us.
2
"Republicans Got Us Into This Mess, and They Have to Get Us Out of It". This headline is quite telling. Either the Democrats are unwilling to step across party lines in order to help remove Trump or they're unable to muster their ranks to do any heavy lifting. In either case they paint themselves as masters of vituperation and little else. One might think that with control of the House, ten confirmed Presidential nominees and thirteen potentials in waiting that the party would be flush with ideas and momentum. Instead the Democratic party is fractured and the cacophony of competing voices serves only as an ersatz to party unity. The only unity found within Democratic ranks is one of relentless animus directed towards the President. Attacking his style but finding his substance impenetrable. The Democrats revel dwelling in a dystopian landscape, having Cassandra carry their banner high and proclaiming their truths. They have no options other than to perpetuate a divisive society and put forth a narrative in which only they are capable of saving us from ourselves. Republican resistance to the unfettered fealty and intransigence to Democratic dogma comes when precursors of a healthy economy, national security and unbiased governance are in place. I suggest that the Democrats pack up their show and take it to Venezuela.
1
sorry, what "substance"?
there is none. you are putting your faith in a realty show persona with none of the required experience of any kind. there is no substance to attack!
8
"Republicans Got Us Into This Mess, and They Have to Get Us Out of It". This headline is quite telling. Either the Democrats are unwilling to step across party lines in order to help remove Trump or they're unable to muster their ranks to do any heavy lifting. In either case they paint themselves as masters of vituperation and little else. One might think that with control of the House, ten confirmed Presidential nominees and thirteen potentials in waiting that the party would be flush with ideas and momentum. Instead the Democratic party is fractured and the cacophony of competing voices serves only as an ersatz to party unity. The only unity found within Democratic ranks is one of relentless animus directed towards the President. Attacking his style but finding his substance impenetrable. The Democrats revel dwelling in a dystopian landscape, having Cassandra carry their banner high and proclaiming their truths. They have no options other than to perpetuate a divisive society and put forth a narrative in which only they are capable of saving us from ourselves. Republican resistance to the unfettered fealty and intransigence to Democratic dogma comes when precursors of a healthy economy, national security and unbiased governance are in place. I suggest that the Democrats pack up their show and move it to Venezuela.
1
The NYTimes needs a downvote button.
7
@Kurt Pickard -- your opening is absurd: the Democrats are champing at the bit to " help remove Trump," wait and see what happens once the Mueller report is complete.
And then as to "... but finding his substance impenetrable. "
Sooo, Kurt ... why don't you 'splain to us about Mr. Trump's "substance?" I'm waiting, with no expectation.
There was an old joke that long predated "where's the beef?"
waiter: how did you find your steak, sir?
diner: it was hidden under the string bean.
In Nov 2020, the voters have a chance to make clear to the GOP what they believe. I hope that everyone registers and votes, to show the GOP what they believe. The future of the USA is at stake. Trump and his GOP followers believe that the US Constitution is meaningless. If that is true, the USA as we know it, is destroyed. So register, vote in Nov 202. In the meantime, make our opinion clear to your representatives in congress.
7
Don't hold your breath while waiting for the Republican Party to save the United States from President Trump. They will wait until the very last second to remove their support, exactly because of the strong support of the Republican voters. The voters have spoken, and there is no use for the Congress to fight them.
I, a life-long Republican, have walked away from the party, but not primarily because of President Trump's poor management of the functions of the federal executive branch, including his horrendous removal of regulations protecting the health and financial well-being of all US citizens. And not just because of the Republican Congress (in charge for 8 years) which has, among other foul deeds, implemented a tax "reform" bill that is adding national debt at a terrifying pace, and trying to sell same as a good idea for the middle class.
No, the main reason I left, is because I no longer could relate to a group of voters who seemingly without any hesitation continue to support this President and Congress, and the things they have done to damage the future of our country.
Who knows if the Democrats can do any better. As pointed out in this piece, there are only two political parties in this country and unless that changes, the Democrats are the only other option for people like me disenchanted with the Republican Party.
10
@Jerrold
As a lifelong Democrat who admires FDR, Truman, LBJ and Obama, I welcome you. You might even get to like us; some of us might even be your neighbors.
What do you expect from the party of the Anglo Saxon male, whose numbers will continue to shrink in both absolute and relative measures. Even if just 100 are left, 90 would approve Trump.
6
Dear fellow readers, please do not underestimate the intelligence and negate the good intentions of those who support the policies of this president. Many of us do not like him personally, and would have preferred the Republican candidate for the 2016 election to be a better one. However he won the primaries and then the presidential election, using the rules that our Constitution establishes. The main problem we have is that we do not like the options the Democratic party offers us, Hillary then and Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and other socialist potential candidates now. America is deeply divided as to the model of country we like, and unfortunately the Democrats are moving further to the left, which for many is not the way we should go.
Please accept that people with different opinions may have have some valid points, and that there are serious concerns about a party presenting AOC's views as the direction the country should take.
4
@Ricardo S
Splattering the resistance with a single word epithet - socialism, while simply saying that you support the Presidents policies, without any suggestions of which, presents your case as far from the politeness you commence with.
Great, you don't like Trump, the person, but you like his policies. I think you are missing what most people find most disturbing about this President and his supporters. There are plenty of precise policy decisions that are contrary to most of what we consider American values. Kids locked up in privatized prison complexes for having the gall to come with their parents to seek a better life. Blanket bans on immigration (and tourism) of people based on their religion, and even on ones who have proven themselves, and putting their own lives on the line to do so, to be our allies. The claim to be fixing the swamp, while bringing, time and again, swamp creatures themselves to (de)regulate the industries they are in charge of. I could go on, but I'd like you to do so.
What is this claim of socialism? Point to it and tell us what it is that is so scary about it. These are not positions that seem to phase your average American. Continually fighting for the billionaire bull in a china shop, with fear-mongering and jingoism, is what is scaring your average American.
Sure, he was elected, according to the system given us, but, you must be aware, the system also has its own checks and balances.
He chose to go there at his peril.
7
@Ricardo S
This sounds like the Voice of the Silent Majority.
3
@Ricardo S,
But rather than pushing for a replacement, you'll look the other way and allow crimes, grift and scandal to rock our country.
By the by...HRC was considered to be a Republican Lite by many. She and the Dem. party are what Reagan Republicans were just a few decades ago.
Sanders, Warren and even AOC are speaking out for The People. Their policies are about bettering the lives of the 99%. That would include conservatives.
We should all be for clean water, air and soil. We should be all for healthcare for everyone. We should all be for a sustainable, habitable planet. One which works for EVERYONE, not just a small select few.
Trump is none of those.
…Yet you allow and turn a blind eye to transgressions against our country and the world.
8
I think the unemployment rate--at least in the current economy--if a somewhat misleading number.
In large measure because it fails to measure the quality of the work that jobs entail--or delineate how many of those jobs fail to offer benefits or a living wage.
The best estimate I am aware says over 20 million Americans are working at or very close to the current Federal minimum wage. "Full" employment seems more than a little empty when the job doesn't pay enough to live on.
The discontent out there is real.
Elites on the right and the left ignore it at their peril.
8
@Doug Johnston
Thank you. Minimum wage jobs with no benefits means that many Americans are working two jobs to break even. If they have children at home, those kids become latchkey kids with no one at home when they return from school. Their parents will be too tired to help them with homework, or to meet with teachers. Full employment at Wal-Mart and Dollar Stores is hanging by our fingernails. This is pure bunk.
1
As long as he keeps blaring the horn of white grievance, he'll remain the GOP's darling ... no matter what.
8
"In the long run, a third or so of the country cannot effectively govern the other two-thirds with an unpopular agenda and a Twitter account."
Note that Hitler and Mussolini both took over with one third of their nation's support, even without a Twitter account.
12
Sort of, but it has to work out in historical fashion: how Italy rid itself of Mussolini, Germany of Hitler, Japan of the generals, and all of the lesser insults to humankind. The supposed entity called the Republican Party is riding high, able to subvert what we imagine is America to their many foul interests; not going to easily detach from the most disruptive head of state unless.... something far worse than politics is happening. Worse, like being conquered in an actual war, having total economic collapse, famine, plague.
It wouldn’t be pleasant to look forward to the developing catastrophes but disaster is the proven removal tool for a rogue government. Pretty much that GOP pachyderm has to fall into the pit of spikes it is currently digging.
3
Hey I never supported him ever!!!!!!!!
Republican since 1992 !!!!!!
Trump should be in jail
And I am voting as an informed moderate and progressive on social issues
I don't get these Gallup's showing over 80% republican approval for this Russian operative in chief
Do you call 1000 people ? Then extrapolate ?
So dumb to go with these statistical head games
7
Thank you for this editorial.
I have always thought that impeachment is not the best cause of action, but instead a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate must publicly call for the President to resign. This is our best hope for moving forward.
I am a Democrat and am so angry at the utterly feckless Republicans for sitting on their hands throughout this ordeal, and would hate for them to get any redemption or credit for doing the right thing now...But, as much as I would like to see the GOP taken to the political woodshed, and the President and members of his family sent up river, the welfare of our democracy and its citizens must come first over feelings of justifiable punishment. At the end of the day someone has to be the adult in the room, and we (Democrats) need to be that adult. But, I will still never forgive the GOP for what they have done to our country, never, ever.
9
This must be how early homo sapiens felt reading the inner monologue of neanderthals.
Evolve, gentlemen.
4
The Republican Party cares not a wit about anything other than white male privilege and money.Hopefully Trump and Pence and the whole soulless lot of them will go down for being traitors to our once wonderful country.Don't talk Pence to me, Putin told Manafort to pull that oleaginous pile of piety out of Indiana to be VP. and Indiana was delighted to be rid of him.Anyone who still votes republican is either a crook or stupid or both.
10
Wishful thinking.
2
Republican Party leaders Julian Assange, Benjamin Netanyahu, Kim Jong Un, Recep Erdogan, Rodrigo Duterte, Mohammed bin Salman, Abdel el-Sissi, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have no motivation nor reason to stop Donald Trump from using MAGA to make them and their nations great again.
8
If anybody looks like a parachute, it's Mike Pence,
That ship has sailed.
You know ... if a skunk died on your front lawn and it took you two months to get rid of it, your neighbors wouldn't be very happy. If Republicans ever do reluctantly vote for impeachment, the American people are still going to treat the Republican party like a skunky neighbor.
5
Psssst don't tell anyone. Republicans ARE the mess.
8
" For reasons both substantial and practical, we believe his (Trump) disgorgement by Republicans can happen, might happen — and should happen. ... Contrary to conventional wisdom, removal by his party would be as healthy for America’s democracy as his removal by the voters, perhaps more so."
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda. Far too many Republican apologists, including Rauch and Wehner, are dangerously delusional about the illusion of a latent decency in the GOP which is capable of protecting this country and the GOP from Trump. Their greatest delusion being their blind insistence that it is Trump who has brought rot to the Republican party and the 'American Way'. When in fact it is the Republican party and its malignancy of the 'Southern Strategy' that bears full responsibility. Trump is at home and atop the GOP apologists on behalf of "decent" Nazis in Charlottesville. Trump has polished that strategy to a high and respectable sheen. Trump is gleefully protected by the GOP. A malign Trump will NOT be thwarted by a Lincoln-like resurrection among the faithful.
Please stop with the prayer-like storylines where the GOP rises toward the sun and saves us from Trump. It will not happen and deep down you know it. It is a dangerous delusion.
8
You say that coming events may make Republicans dump Trump in order to save their own necks. Wouldn't it be better if they were to allow their consciences to to rule and dump him because he is destroying the country?
7
What I find completely and utterly unacceptable is for the career criminal at the head of what looks more and more like a “Crime Family” of tax evaders, draft dodger, fraud, obstructer of justice, fraudulent charitable foundation, hostile work environments, discriminatory race based renting practices, campaign finance violations to coverup infidelity to help get elected, there’s not enough room here to even get into the Russian conspiracies. We all saw him confirm his part in the Russian hacking when he begged on live TV for Russia to “Find the emails”. This incompetent needs to held to account for the first time in his miserable life. A pardon would be a bigger national stain than the Nixon & Contra Cocaine pardons combined. The system is rigged in favor of criminals like the Swamp Creature, but if our Constitution means anything and we believe in liberty and justice for all. Then a pardon for anyone who conspired with Russia or tried to cover it up must be brought to justice. It would be fitting perfectly so, for the gold toilet sitter to be locked up and forced to sit on a stainless steel throne where he so clearly belongs. After a fair speedy trial before a jury of all women and people of color, found guilty and sentenced to the mandatory maximum. Send him to Club Fed where he can whine about how unfair life has been to him. We need some justice not pardons for him and his demon spawn of animal assassins and frauds. “Lock the grifters up.” No Pardons for any traitors ever
6
The Republican Party has a secret weapon for 2020. It’s especially effective because it’s stealthy: The Democrats seem oblivious to its power. And the GOP needn’t lift a finger for it to work. All Republicans have to do is sit back and watch 29-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . . . exist.
3
@P&L Seriously? You think a freshman representative is going to throw the election to Donald The Deplorable Criminal-in-Waiting? I think she is going to mature quite nicely, unlike that also-freshman Ted Cruz, remember him back in the day?
In short, republican legislators with law school and post graduate degrees are at the mercy of their uneducated, rural religious nut constituencies. That’s monumentally pathetic, infuriating and scary.
8
Democrats won't be happy with ANY republican in office.
P.S. While Trump is claiming the NYT is failing, it is oddly thriving due to Trump. While the NYT is claiming they hate Trump, all they really report on is Trump. Suspect?
4
@kz
The Times is the paper of record, as in an historical record. Trump is the President of the United States. Historians will look at the Times archives to help with research.
Trump's support is based not on the promise of good policy, but identity. This is why it matters less what he says or what his administration does; as long as there is not complete disaster, everything is fine for his supporters. The Republican party realize that their policies are largely unpopular and Trump has been a revelation in how to continue to dupe the public with identity politics. This column assumes that Republicans actually care for the country and democracy more than has been demonstrated in recent years.
5
@Al
They don't. McConnell shoved a Catholic ideologue, Kavanaugh, on to the Supreme Ct. He also shoved an anti-employee corporate shill on to the Court. He is happy to put unqualified onto Superior and Appeals Courts. He stalled Obama's traditional right to appoint a respected moderate, Merrick Garland, until Trump gained office. What can explain McConnell's "leadership"? Coal mines are no longer viable. Maybe he runs on automatic.
The GOP is most likely to cash in on Trump's administration in the form of judges who they will hope can protect conservative policies if (when) they fall out of power and then hope they can hold the Senate and state offices. They will not abandon him unless absolutely forced to do so.
6
The relationship between a party and its voters is interactive, shaped by policy, methods, messaging, how the voters respond, and, it would seem, what you can get away with.
I once thought politicians and elites who work to influence politics and policy in America would surely restrain themselves according to a maxim expressed by a chapter title in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Overreachin’ Don’t Pay.
Well, it seems some do and some don’t restrain themselves according to that maxim. Apparently fortune sometimes favors the persistently bold.
Our current predicament involves political reflexes within voters that Rs (and Ds for that matter) have worked hard to shape since at least 1980.
The scenarios you outline aren’t nearly enough to reshape those reflexes. Will the Rs continue to benefit by working towards government dysfunction when the Ds hold the presidency? Will they rethink their policies and messaging on revenue, regulation, the safety net, and climate change? Will the Ds help force that by doing their job as a healthy center left party? Is the gap between political messaging and actual policies the sort of thing commie intellectuals once called “a contradiction?”
4
Of course, this article makes joy-raising reading for anybody NOT a Trump dead-ender and there probably aren't too many thousands of those capable of (or interested in) reading the NY Times.
I looked carefully and believe that the authors made NO MENTION of the Mueller probe. I remember when Manafort went on trial, NPR pundits speculated that even though the Government's case "looked strong," everybody in the U.S. knew that this was an early "referendum" on Trumpism. Those pundits speculated that a single Trump voter - even on that jury there probably were 3 or 4 - could stick a thumb in the prosecution's eye ... and might choose to do so.
Just as Nixon ultimately inflicted too many wounds upon himself and was forced to resign, Trump will really not be able to wriggle out of a damning report the way I dealt with the "Access Hollywood leak."
Yes, all the elected Republicans in D.C. appear to lack anything resembling a backbone when it comes to Trump, but they are not lemmings. I predict that when they perceive him to be heading toward a cliff's edge, ther instinct for self-preservation will finally overcome all of the their fears re speaking out. As with Joe McCarthy, one of their number will stand up and survive a day or 2 of Presidential tweets. Then others will join that individual, and while none of us would expect Donald to "do the right thing," any more than Nixon, it IS possible that he might follow the Rauch/Wehner script in the absence of ANY decent alternative!
@el chompo
The man who took McCarthy down was a respected Naval officer when McCarthy went after Naval men. His famous and devastating quote: "Have you no shame, sir"? My uncles were Naval Captains on carriers in WWII; they really respected that officer. Mattis did the right thing; hopefully, there will be other officers who will speak up. The military is top down; they can exert honest leadership in the troops who have been wrongfully used to do domestic police work on the border. They missed family Thanksgivings to defend us from unarmed poor people, hungry and marching in flipflops, tennis shoes, and bare feet. Ordered to do that by a crooked draft dodger with fake bone spurs.
This cult of personality is sickening.
2
A Republican "reawakening' in abandoning Trump would be a political breath of fresh air. Whether facing election catastrophe, international shaming, or Mueller's mission, it would lower polarization faster than any other scenario.
An election defeat or impeachment produces a desire to strike back in Congress, while a move toward sanity lowers tensions everywhere. Imagine that!
Watching the Republican death-dive is like watching a family member descend into cult-like self destruction. The experience is both painful and exasperating. We actually need both parties healthy to relight that beacon that is America.
3
“Mr. Trump might step down to avoid impeachment, particularly if he were promised clemency for himself and his family.”
Personally, I do not want to see this happen. He and his businesses have committed far too many crimes for far too long, starting well before his presidency, to escape prosection.
7
Utter claptrap. It is difficult to understand why the NYT would publish this lengthy and risibly ridiculous drivel, and I want my ten minutes reset on life’s clock.
1
No longer a long shot: That Trump will do something in a crisis that screws us all over. Real bad. Beyond what he and Putin have already colluded to do.
7
The best thing for our democracy will be for candidate Trump to lead the GOP over the electoral cliff in 2020. They abandoned their “core principles” long ago. Or perhaps their only principle was “more for the rich.”
9
I believe that many Republican voters still believe that they are voting for Eisenhower Republicans. They seem blinded to the shift to the extreme right of their party.
6
I appreciate this well reasoned, speculative outlook.
I suppose it would be impolite to mention the potential implications of geriatric factors.
So I won't do that.
2
What businesses in the USA need to be told by government is that this time there is an economic and real estate collapse in the USA, the government will not be able to bail you out because the government hasn't paid off the Corporate Welfare bail outs of the 2008 crash. USA government debt just keeps on climbing and the government gave tax cuts! Go figure! The government are taxes; without taxes there would be no government and the USA would revert to tribalism.
5
As a Liberal-centrist Republican...I can attest that the problem for the GOP is that, ironically, they were Terminally Successful in their long term election strategy from the 90's.
They were successful in Gerrymandering.
They were successful in NOT JUST generalized Voter Suppression on the Democratic Side...but WITHIN their safe Districts, they were successful in suppressing the MODERATE Republican Voters from bothering to vote in the Primaries.
They were successful in 'boiling down' the Primaries to the point that instead of a healthy pool of mixed opinions of Moderates and Conservatives...they distilled it down to a rank puddle of far-fringe single issue voters.
All of these actions were great from a General Election perspective back in the 90's. The Campaign Professionals loved the fact that Smaller primaries are easier to predict. Clinch the Primary and the General was assured.
The fact that most Independent Moderates are actually Republicans who drifted away was exactly what the New GOP wanted. Moderates had a bad habit of skewing the desired Primary Results.
But now, the GOP is stuck with a rank and bitter, boiled-down Primary Puddle that will ONLY elect Fringe Candidates.
And Unlike the Democrats, the GOP honestly doesn't even know HOW to reach out and EXPAND its constituency beyond its current Base. In fact, the current Base will react to any such strategy with anger.
The GOP is the Frog that boiled itself to death in its own Pot.
15
Good you mention that gerrymandering too. Thank you
1
By "vital democratic norms", do they mean rigging primaries to guarantee the establishment's hand-picked candidate? Republicans would move, if the alternative wasn't an increasingly extreme and absolutist opposing party. NYT and blue bubblers just can't see it, but they are the worse of two evils to the voters they despise and smell at Walmart. If Dems did understand this, and put up a candidate who could speak to them, Trump would have failed. I honestly thought before Nov. 2016 that no matter who was elected, there would be an impeachment. There still might be, but it looks less and less likely, because the Democrats look even more left of where they started this cycle. In a week where their extremism has them destroying their own or being neutered by their own hypocrisy, they provide Trump a backstop. Heck, some even wore white to honor suffragettes in Black History month, ignoring that black women were left behind and had to continue the fight on their own for another 50 years.
1
If the constant applause and adulation Trump received during the State of the Union speech is any indication, the GOP has zero intention of turning their backs on him. It is more important to them to remain in power than to save their country from an obviously incompetent and crooked President. The realization that they may be willing to ignore even treason is one of the saddest scenarios I have ever had to ponder.
11
The only thing that will turn Republicants against Trump is a major downward turn in the economy. That's it.
AS REPEATEDLY SHOWN, the GOP doesn't care about:
= character, honesty, or honor
= the debt
= the poor, the middle class, minorities or women's rights
= Christian morals
= the free press
= science or the planet
= our allies & allegiances or our standing in the world, or
= the mountain of evidence pointing to Trump & Co.'s treasonous flagrant violation of election laws, the emolument clause, tax laws, and their repeated obstruction of justice.
THEY DON'T CARE. What they DO care about is
POWER and PROFITS, period.
And only when the latter is threatened will they consider dumping the guy who holds the former.
13
Wishful and foolish thinking on the authors' part. The Republicans have been the Party of "Shutdown The Government" for the last 9 years. Trump speaks for the Republican Party and is implementing its long range goals.
8
There's no such thing as a "Republican" if one insists on specifics, just as there hasn't ever been any such thing as a "Conservative" beyond platitudes and vagaries. Their most fundamental tenet is their Achilles' Heel: power determines reality. So: what is a Republican? Whatever the leader says it is. For the moment that leader is Trump.
One must add how ugly it has become to see Peter Wehner here and anywhere else that gives him a soapbox serving these cocktails of feeble defiance, leadership-in-exile, and prescriptive futility. He has a sellable byline in the first place because he was tenured at the poison academy that caused this downfall. The culmination of all his arguments now sits in the Oval Office, deciding by his gut, faith-based in himself, denying the very idea of empirical reality, and driving his own party under the whip of power-as-fact.
Now Wehner wants to explain to us that this can all be remedied if the GOP only returns to the erudite palatable lying, blindness, and rationalizations that are the stock in trade of Conservative intellectuals such as, say, Peter Wehner. Too late. Orwell gave us Peter Wehner in Animal Farm: Squealer. "He was a brilliant talker, and when he was arguing some difficult point he had a way of skipping from side to side and whisking his tail which was somehow very persuasive. The others said of Squealer that he could turn black into white."
The Times doesn't permit me to say here what I'd gladly say to his face.
9
In 1974 Republican senator Barry Goldwater went to the oval office and told Nixon to resign or face removal. There are no Barry Goldwaters in the current senate. The Watergate scandal is a blip on the screen compared to Trump's criminal enterprise. Had Goldwater been in office today, he would have been raising the rafters for Trump's removal. Trump is surviving for one reason: the senators on his side of the aisle are gutless. They know he's crooked. They are just too scared of his base to buck him.
7
I would appreciate if someone could point out to me what policies Mr. Trump forwards that are not wholeheartedly endorsed by mainline Republicans. Mr. Trump has not pursued any fringe policy goals. He does what the Republican party wishes to do, if more loudly and with greater demonstrative cruelty to its opposition. Efforts to try to separate the Trump administration from the goals of the Republican party are undertaken dishonestly to try to provide air cover for his enablers. Please tell a higher caliber of lie.
The Republican party has had numerous chances to rein Mr. Trump in. They haven't taken them before and will not use them now. I imagine they will not do so in the future, because Mr. Trump gives them a convenient way to disclaim responsibility for the venal excesses that they have always wanted. Like Mr. Trump has said before, he could commit murder on the streets of New York City and not lose any supporters. He is correct.
11
I think this article is delusional, especially about the 1/3 of the country ruling the other 2/3rds, what he leaves out is thanks to our corrupted political system and fundamental changes since the founding, that is very much true. With the decrepit electoral college that not only couldn't prevent Trump from being elected as once envisioned by the founders, but allowed him to be elected with a minority vote gap of 3 million, and the gerrymandered voting districts and the red states doing everything they can to disenfranchise non white and other voters, it is very possible for this to go on.
And to expect the GOP led by people like Mitch McConnel to show any kind of courage is idiotic. In 1974 the GOP still had people like Peter Rodino from NJ, it had people along the lines of Bob Dole, who knew what a disaster Nixon was and finally admitted he was detroying the country. And it is their own fault, the GOP gerrymandered the districts so they are dominated by their base, so they can't count on moderating their stance to attract other voters. The fact that 90% of republicans approve of Trump says a lot about the party, if 90% of republicans approve of him and 35% of the country does as a whole, that tells the tale of what it means to be repbublican these days.
7
Given his 90% approval rating, and an ongoing majority in the Senate, and most state houses, as well as victories in almost every race or primary where the Republican ran as a Trump supporter, I doubt even a "smoking gun" would prompt the Republicans from turning on him. The best case scenario if Mueller reveals criminal behavior on his part, will be the Republicans win a "sweetheart deal" for him to resign with clemency for himself and his family, thus avoiding a bloody impeachment battle that would show the Republicans for what they are - despicable enablers of a traitor. Failing that, it will fall to the voters to remove him, which is the more likely path, though again, noting his Republican bulwark, re-election isn't out of the question, Then what?
9
Comparing today's Republican Party with the one that existed 45 years old is ridiculous. None of its current members has the patriotism and moral backbone to stand up to a corrupt and mentally imbalanced President. The "Party of No" is destined for the dustbin of history. Any political party that needs to rely on voter suppression to maintain power is doomed. While China is actively involved in major development projects through the world and making advances in critical technologies such as quantum computing, the Trump Administration's biggest project is a medieval wall. The Republican Party gave America its greatest President, Abraham Lincoln. Now the best it can do is Donald J Trump. Sorry, you can't recover from that.
9
Actually, two thirds of America does not want to be control by the one third that is controlled by socialist liberals. Look at the electoral map and see this as a truthful fact. The larger land mass of AMERICA is conservative and the smaller land mass is socialist liberal .
When did landmass start voting?
6
Population and not landmass should be the determining factor in elections. People vote not land.
5
I am a Canadian who has been following your drama since Trump started running for office. It was intertaining until the consequences started being felt in Canada and throughout the world. Now it's more reading the morning headlines to see what new tweet will affect and destabilize us.
I think that your political system....which is now at 250 years old is clearly antiquated. It needs to be revamped and brought into the 21st century. Sadly your constitution is somehow considered God given and sacred instead of a document cobbled together by white men living in an era of horse drawn transportation and rudimentary communications.
For your sake...and ours...I very sincerely hope some level of commonsense will soon prevail and American politicians will actually start running a country again.
8
Trump is a best a distraction ("Look over here, while my friend picks your pocket!") and at worst a tool of the extremely wealthy ("anyone up for cutting taxes on the wealthy by $1.5T in a booming economy?"). The trouble is there aren't enough rich folk to elect someone like him, so we need villains to incite the rest, or enough of the rest to get elected. Happily, the Fox News echo chambers presents us with hair-raising tales of massive caravans at our border and babies ripped from wombs.
Arguably one of the biggest scams ever pulled off on the American people: a man who's spent his entire life in a bubble, his entire career trampling on the common man, as the hero of the common man.
6
There's one big flaw with this argument. Republicans may be forced to abandon Trump - but Trumpism is all the party has to offer.
Stirring up division on race, guns, abortion, religion, attacking government, cutting taxes, corrupting government, letting corporations run wild, trashing the planet, shoving wealth upwards...
Restricting voting, gerrymandering districts, flooding politics with money, funding a vast propaganda media empire, accepting help from our enemies in order to swing elections...
Trump is just the biggest symptom of the conservative madness afflicting America. Expecting them to fix it is like asking an arsonist to put out the fire he started, or the mugger who just robbed you to give you your money back and turn himself in.
Getting rid of Trump is just the start; the whole party has to go.
9
In my lifetime (I am 60) I cannot think of a single Republican policy that has had a positive effect on our society. Over the last 40 years they have stoked racism and implemented disastrous economic, military, civic, and foreign policies that have taken our country from the moral leader of the world to an exceptionally abysmal, weak, and immoral country.
Trump far from being an anomaly is a typical conservative Republican. He has simply expressed publicly what all Republicans firmly believe, freeing them to shout out their core beliefs with righteous indignation. He is the Republican leader, this is the Republican party, and it is the same Republican party it has been for 40 years.
9
Yes, maybe the Republicans will eventually throw our current president under the bus once he has helped them accomplish so many of their dreams:
A tax bill that gives billions to billionaires
Packing the federal courts with far-right judges
Getting rid of federal regulations that interfere with corporate profits
Slowing the response to climate change so that fossil fuel companies can continue to rake in profits
Giving extremist religious groups all that they want
Keeping non-whites "in their place"
Keeping women in the home or at least out of powerful positions.
Getting rid of ACA and any other healthcare reforms that interfere with big med and insurance company profits
Take away our public lands for private profit
Make sure they and no one else run the country
Et cetera...
Our current president is just an incompetent figurehead. The Republican Party is using him for their purposes. There is no way that this Republican Party can be reformed. It must be solidly defeated. Some new party can then take form from the debris.
10
I disagree. The president has never been seen as more presidential. Because the Democrats have abandoned class politics for identity politics, they are going down like the Hindenburg.
2
@springtime
Nobody does identity politics better than Donald Trump and the G.O.P.
7
While I agree that Republicans got us into this mess, I believe they began doing so years and years ago. Paraphrasing the words of Messiah's tenor, they have made straight in a political desert a highway for their Trump.
They have taught hatred of government, contempt for the poor and near poor, demonized liberals by redefining "socialism, and identified other enemies.
They have "religiofied" free market capitalism and embraced white racists. They have created two - perhaps three - enormous deficits, initiated two draining wars in the Middle East, weakened congressional agencies, and recently ignored tradition and Constitution as they refused to work with and recognize the legitimacy of a popularly elected president.
For years they have touted individual freedom and greed. while ignoring major problems in American society, blatant injustices, significant and hurtful economic and social changes, while serving exclusively corporations, the enormously wealthy, and the well-to-do, often with the transfer of public monies upward and outward.
Their falsehoods and hypocrisy have poisoned our politics and promoted divisiveness and extreme partisanship.
Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, Cheney, Bush II, Ryan, McConnell - just to name a few of the many power- and ideology-driven politicians who messed with the people's government and country.
GOP. Got Other Priorities.
5
I read articles like this and the related comments and I can't help but thinking that we're in an endless loop of a Kurosawa movie, the popcorn and Icee machines shorted out and are on fire and the doors to the theater are locked from the outside.
Though there are mileposts along the way...Viet Nam, Watergate, Roe v. Wade, Citizens United, DC v. Heller, Janus, Gingrich, McConnell, Fox News and, of course, Trump, where the heck did we go wrong?
3
Dream on. For so long as the Democratic party is led around by the nose by pied pipers like AOC and the rest of the self-centered angry mob of "we know better than you" misandrists, Trump wins. Putting to one side whether he should, he will.
The Democrats sorely need to wise up, and grow up. Delusional articles like these - oh don't worry Trump and the Republicans will fall apart of their own accord and the field will then be completely free for us to waltz in and implement our wildest dreams - only prolong the Democrats' inability to properly organize themselves, dismiss the lunatic fringe, and agree and then present a nationally acceptable case to retake power.
And, truth be told, the Party's recent history of mobs of women, including senior Party "leaders", ecumenically disqualifying men because of "me too" and/or general boorishness allegations, coupled with the "third/fourth trimester" abortion debacle, serve the Party no good. Is Pelosi the only disciplined grown up around? The Party needs to get its act together, properly, and not continue to pander to its hyper aggressive know it alls.
Otherwise, if you loved Trump the first time, you'll enjoy him even more in round two - when re-election is no longer a consideration for Trump and his team.
1
Impeachment is not even a slight possibility. Moreover, with the current crop of Dem candidates, Trump will win handily in 2020. The mid terms are no indication of a President’s popularity. This is the most popular President since Reagan. I promise, you have no idea how popular he is. Nothing has happened - YET - that could even vaguely turn the tide of public opinion against him. I could go into why this is, but it’s too boring.
Trump is here for the duration, unless some major development occurs. No, there has not been anything even close to a major development. Not Cohen; not his racism or vulgarity, everyone loves that, even the Times - it sells newspapers; not the shutdown, not Stormy (both add to his popularity); not the tariffs on China; certainly not the tax cuts for the wealthy or the promotion of the causes of climate change- those also make him more popular with everyone except readers of the Times and listeners to NPR; not Russia - that gets him approval with Chomsky liberals who are terrified of war with Russia or its proxies; not Iran, everyone hates Iran, though Iran should be our ally; not Trump and Jared’s pass on Prince Mohammed’s murder of Khashoggi... nothing.
Meanwhile the Times and others continue to show their impotence by screaming for his removal, before there is any real pretext for it, thus guaranteeing that no one will listen to them when Trump actually makes a serious blunder.
1
When population demographics start trending away from you it’s very tempting to do unsavory things to keep power in the “right” hands. Unsavory candidates become reasonable choices. Voter suppression disguised as voter fraud is a useful tool. Racism is a survival technique. And guns seem like rational self defense tools. When you build walls to hold back the tide you pretty much guarantee the water will rise and drown us all.
5
"There may be no single smoking-gun tape in Mr. Trump’s case, but the sheer weight of financial and ethical wrongdoing could become too much, even for many Republicans."
+
"The most troubling development of the Trump era is not the president’s own election and subsequent behavior; it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party."
=
No change whatsoever in the Republican Party. You neutralized your own argument - they will follow him over the cliff. The conservative mentality cannot, will not, allow admission that they (or anyone in the party) was ever "wrong" about anything. Democrats are different...look at Virginia where Dems are calling for the Dem Governor to step down. The authoritarian patriarchal Republicans can't do anything like criticizing their own.
6
The Russians clearly interfered with our election and aided DJT and Pence.
Their “reign” is tainted. Both are there illegitimately.
If this is borne out by the Mueller Report, why does Pence get to stay? He was part and parcel to the whole mess.
6
Not only must we re-dedicate to fealty towards all laws that make us a Nation, there MUST be sober and just consequences applied to this obvious attack against all we hold dear. Namely, every federal/Supreme Court justice seated by this criminal administration must be ruled illegitimate and null. And our 4th Estate needs to step out from lazy reflexive orthodoxy, take a Bill Bradlee/Katherine Graham gulp of fresh air, and conduct primary research of our history and our ideals. There is NO LAW that says a president cannot be indicted while in office. Go ahead, Press, refute that..
3
So what’s new in this latest diatribe, except the same old bashing of the president. I’ve rarely seen so many “mights” used in an op-ed piece. This might happen, that might happen. Why don’t they just say they have no idea what is going to happen. The coastal collusion of news pundits simply has no understanding of how the average person across this country views the world. These know—it-alls would have you believe that the vast majority of Trump supporters are an uneducated and ignorant underclass that feels he can do no wrong. The same misjudgment Hillary made that cost her the presidency. The only constituency missing from the Trump supporters are those who view America as a battleground between the haves and have-nots; who want free college, free healthcare, free everything that somehow the rich and hard-working will pay for; and who somehow equate a legal system for entry into our country as an anti-immigrant, even racist, policy.
If Trump can’t be impeached then no one can be impeached.
3
Republicans and a few Dems in the House passed a funding bill including the border wall in Dec after Nancy Pelosi said there wre not enough votes. Then a minority of Dem Senators blocked its passage so who really caused this issue? A minority of Dems that's who. Why cannot you Dems accept this?
“..it is the institutional corruption, weakness and self-betrayal of the Republican Party. The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency. It has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself. And it has embraced presidential conduct that, if engaged in by a Democrat, it would have been denounced as corrupt, incompetent and even treasonous.”
You are talking about Mike Pence.
1
When Trump, in the SOTU address, blasted wealthy liberals for living behind walls, his hypocrisy was laughable. Long before he was afforded secret service protection, Trump's New Jersey and Florida compounds were behind walls. Those walls were designed to deny access to people of color, just as the apartments he owns deny access to people of color. Trump argues that walls keep out undocumented immigrants, with the exception of those he hired to work for him. Firing them now is too late. Trump has already been exposed for the racist hypocrite he is.
2
Trump's base of support reminds me that Nero despite his nuttiness remained popular with sections of Rome's lower classes and for a couple of decades people would visit his grave.
The country will be stuck with Trump until he is voted out of office assuming the Dems don't make a stupid mistake nominating the wrong person for Prexy, or unless nature takes it's course to remove him by natural causes.
1
No. Republicans got us into this mess, so logic would dictate we need to get rid of Republicans.
Otherwise we are playing ourselves for fools.
2
Ah, but will the Repubs rid themselves of Trump, his cabinet, and his treasonous crime family? And what will they have left: white privilege and hate of the other, both posing as "religion"? They have done NOTHING to rebuild the nation's increasingly frail infrastructure, its citizens' needs, and the climatic time bomb.
At the moment, they have the same sort of reputation as a spirochete (the organism that causes syphilis) or the protozoa that causes malaria.
The Repubs currently have no reputation to lose among thinking people. How can they get any positive reputation back is anyone's guess.
2
outside chance might make nancy the pres.
1
Our political system is a complete shambles inflicted on our nation by the minority Republican Party through a carefully orchestrated corrupt election strategy of voter suppression and gerrymandering. Untethered and unglued. Trump is who he is - an extreme narcissist wannabe dictator. Nevertheless, the Republican Party allows Trump to disgrace the United States around the globe while remaining totally silent as they serve their billionaire mega-donors.
Trump is destroying the environment, Trump is destroying our strategic alliances with Western Europe and Canada in favor of Russia. Trump is destroying the US economy with a hopeless trade war with China. Trump has allowed North Korea to make fools of the US. Trump has played the racist and bigot card symbolized by “The Wall” - again and again . Trump created massive chaos and widespread pain with his ego-driven “Shutdown”. Trump has displayed unbounded inhumanity tearing immigrant children from the arms of their mothers. Trump is the Republican Party, a party that shows no loyalty to the American people whatsoever.
We cannot deny that this nation has undergone a right wing coup. We need Mueller's probe, and intensive Congressional hearings to reveal the complete corruption of Donald Trump, a Putin puppet. We also need massive voter turnout to overcome further Russian intervention and systematic Republican electoral fraud.
3
When you're whole life is beyond shame, what is there to condemn?
That brings comfort to the 90%... you can feel good about yourself when your 'leader' is beyond the pale.
1
The republicans only problem with Trump is he may and should cause them to lose power over the state and so lose power to force their mean dull delusions on their neighbors through state power.
Republicans are now: a death cult of white evangelicals who follow the recent invented heresies that greed is good and America’s role in history is to bring on the second coming in the Middle East and no human sacrifice is too great for this goal, American right wing Catholics eager to overthrow the Pope since they don’t like his politics or his religion, racists, and glibertarians. That is your eighty percent Trump loving crowd. They are taking a stand. Two years in and proudly meaner and wronger than ever.
They still have the senate and an embarrassingly political Supreme Court.
There is not one national republican who can be named who can be shown to have stood for any principle other than power and party Uber alles. Despite getting many chances every day. Look at the votes of the Supreme Court and for its justices; the bankrupt America and reward fat cat tax legislation. Barr just today on no collusion. Poor woebegone Flake still getting exactly what he wanted on the tax bill and in Kavanaugh. That no adjectives suffice Graham. Follow Graham’s addiction to power at all costs performance art from the McCain funeral of one of their own to today. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
Take note. Never forget. Hold them to account. All of them.
4
Interesting thesis but there are still the "could happens" required to pull it off. The elephant in the room is Right Wing media, such as Fox Noise, that reinforces trump's followers and trump himself. Trump, in turn, reinforces Fox Noise. He is a lucrative part of their business plan that draws the market of trump supporters. This circular feedback loop creates an entire trump industry based on his mendacity. To dethrone trump, you have to break that industry.
But what you say is true:
"In the long run, a third or so of the country cannot effectively govern the other two-thirds with an unpopular agenda and a Twitter account."
I think that this is what Republicans do not realize. The circular feedback loop between trump, his followers, Right Wing media and social media has made Republicans unaware of trump's vulnerability.
As Rick Wilson writes, "Everything trump touches, dies." Republicans would do well to understand that. Dozens of people have been kicked out of the trump administration. One is Reince Priebus who commissioned the G.O.P. report after the 2012 election to identify a modern Republican Party. Instead, the Republican Party remained obdurate.
As you caution:
"What remains to be done is for Republicans to prevent what many of them privately know is quite likely for their party if Mr. Trump remains their leader: a crash landing."
But trump has forced Republicans' unmitigated loyalty. Their crash is inevitable, another trump bankruptcy.
1
There are no "center-right" Republicans anymore. No such thing. If there were, Trump's approval rating among Republicans wouldn't consistently be hovering around 90 percent. Moderate Republicans already left the GOP and became centrist or progressive Democrats. After 30 years as a voting right-of-center Republican who voted for Democrats, too, that's what I did. Anyway...
You have to be very conservative to stick by the Trumpublican Party. You obviously LOVE the appalling rhetoric. You overlook his many transgressions as a person (e.g., his "locker room talk"). And of course, you hate Democrats because, in the rightwing mind, Democrats are ALWAYS worse no matter what. Unfortunately, that describes roughly half the country (a 45-48 percent "minority" is a pretty big minority).
The only way to get thru to roughly half the country - over time - is to start discussing policy and its effects on society. But mainstream news networks, where most people get their information, don't really do that as much as they should. The media circus must be more profitable, so they just keep on beating horses to death and repeat things over and over.
6
Come on, if the Republican Congressional members haven't jumped the Trump ship yet, there really is no new low that could cause them to exit.
As Trump once said of his regular supporters, he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and still not lose any support. I think the same is true now and I think somehow the Republicans would blame the victim.
Any of the President's actions that have hurt the country or embarrassed it abroad and debased the office of the Presidency have occurred with the full consent of the GOP Congressional members.
They don't speak out, they don't counter his lies, they are complicit in every aspect of his Presidency.
You can try and pin the harm done to the Republican Party on Trump but really it is a fantastic, head in the sand, group effort for which every member of the GOP must be held accountable.
5
"The party has abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency."
What has the Republican party conserved over the last 30-60 years? Traditional norms, customs or traditions that were once standard in this country are gone. The "you do you" mindset is firmly entrenched in society. Cost of living continues to go up, the ability to achieve that elusive American dream is for all practical purposes non-existent. Single motherhood is elevated to superstar status, not discouraged; Morals are passe and considered a hindrance on our march to the supposed promised land of utopia.
The election of Trump was just a symptom, not the disease that we find our country in. Their will be no Democratic superman (or woman) candidate that will swoop in and save the day. The decline will continue.
1
#ArthurinCali, I fear you are spot on.
What is the appeal to Trump's cult following ,is it white nationalism, tax cuts or right wing judges. Trump will be exposed thru House hearings, the Mueller report and investigative reporters following up on leads those investigations may point to. THe GOP can see that now Trump is unrestrained and his erratic ,impulsive and ill informed actions or tweets present a clear and present danger to the country. Trump will keep the support of his cult but that group is not enough to get him re-elected especially when all his warts are in full view for the public to see. Trump should negotiate a deal to save his family and fortune which is all he really cares about and make a graceful exit.
1
Well written and argued, but the sad fact is Donald Trump is the ultimate product of 40 years of Republican, neo-liberal thought and action. His rise as inevitable as his fall, which, one can only hope, will be mirrored by that of his party. Rightfully so.
That said, the one reform needed is of the Electoral College. That's the elephant in the room here.
8
The issue is not Trump -- it is, as many of these comments have highlighted, the rock-solid support among Republicans.
That indicates that they have become so partisan that they will support Trump no matter what he does -- and so deluded that they believe the river of twitter lies streaming from the White House.
The issue is that half the country is delusional.
6
Pence can hardly been seen as a 'parachute', when his own dealings as part of Trump's transition team are under scrutiny in the RussiaGate investigations. One very large issue the authors of this article miss, are the 17+ various investigations into Trump, his businesses, taxes, family, 2016 campaign and inaugural committees, etc...There will be outcomes, unseen as of yet, that very well could bring down Trump and everyone associated with him, including Pence and top leaders of the GOP.
Stay tuned....
6
There are more important questions than the ones raised in this Op-ed. How did we reach this state of affairs in our politics? Why does Trump still have popular support, not only from his base- but from many Christian right leaders who presumably know right from wrong? If this state of affairs was unimaginable 50 years ago- what has changed?
Well certain things have not changed over a half a century. Racism, class conflict and sexism are still alive and well- manifesting in myriad ways. Religious leaders are often blinded by their own arrogance and seek fame and riches before trying to enter Heaven. Electorates are easily deceived and manipulated by propaganda.
One thing that is radically different is the state of the Environment- as the destruction of the biosphere proceeds unabated with disastrous consequences for every living thing.
The threat of nuclear war hasn't changed in 50 years- but the perils of environmental collapse make it much more likely. So that has changed.
Courage and morality are scarce virtues when expediency, fear and self-interest prevail.
But all of the above, while probably true- are mere words. At some point it is time to act- to avert catastrophe. To act like men, take responsibility, undo wrongs and look to the future with uncertainty but hope. Why hope? Because there is no choice- despair can lead to reflection- but failing to act- becomes ruin. The time is NOW.
5
Excellent analysis by two very bright and seasoned men. What is missing, perhaps rather difficult to fathom, is why Trump's base refuses to see his glaring flaws and deficiencies-total lack of morality, ethics and principle? One is right to ask what will it take for the base to have a serious case of buyer's remorse?
4
you live in a country where each political group listens to it's own social media...spend some time listening to Fox and you will see why such a high %of your population thinks that the problem lies with the left wing section of your population and Democrats ...and that Trump is treated unfairly.
2
@Heidi
I did not vote for Trump who lost to Clinton by 3M votes. No need to listen to a stupid talking head, Hannity, to understand where we are due to an artifact from the Civil War, aka the Electoral College. The South no longer has slaves picking cotton which Northern mills no longer need, given a finer quality produced in India. My State has 33M people, a good State government, decent environmental regs, a high tech industry. We are stymied by Montana, Wyoming, W. Va, Alabama, Mississippi et al. National vote, no Electoral College needed. No Southern Strategy acceptable.
One thing left out of this article is that young people, including young Republicans, are becoming more liberal. They want a clean environment, non-polluting energy, higher taxes on the wealthy. Trump and the old Republicans represent the past. Will the younger voters of 2020 want to re-elect someone who is happy to go back to the days when rivers caught fire and the air around big cities was brown?
5
The Republican Party should act quickly to separate themselves from trump as this staunch base files their tax returns. It is amazing that these same trump voters have been taking to Twitter to complain about how much taxes they owe and that they won't vote for him again. In the end, people vote with their wallets and these wallets are considerably smaller for all of us. How many of those owing money to the IRS will vote for trump in 2020? I hope none as I don't believe the Republicans will get their act together to oust trump themselves.
3
Trump's support among Republicans may be high but that's because a lot of Republicans, like me, left the party since his election..
5
To the authors: The Republican party "abandoned its core commitments to constitutional norms, to conservative principles and even to basic decency" several decades ago. Or hadn't you noticed.
5
Wow, this is an amazing piece. Months after the rest of the professional political onlooker class began discussing that it wasn't until Republicans turned against Nixon that he finally resigned these two slow learners think they have discovered something. Hey, they say, Republicans have to help remove trump from office!
You guys get paid for coming up with what has been obvious for two years?
3
So much of what Republicans seem to like is based on smoke and mirrors. The economy was already doing well, and the sugar high of the tax cuts will soon wear off leaving us saddled with far greater debt. American manufacturers are still closing plants here and relocating despite Trump's claims to the contrary. The judicial nominations are one area they can point to, but that is as much McConnell as Trump's doing (and the Federalist Society's). What we don't hear enough about is the total abandonment of our principles on the world stage. The appalling threats to abandon NATO, the insults to our allies and toadying to Russia. The flouting of our national security protocols, and the apparent indifference/ignorance that Trump brings to international relations endangers this country every day. Where is the outrage about that ? I hear no sense of urgency from the Republican party on this, which leads to one conclusion: they are not fit to govern.
7
I think for me the most disconcerting thing is to see that people will really do anything for money and power including betraying their country and its principals. I naively believed that people would, at the end of the day put country above all else....boy was I wrong.
9
The article reads: "the collapse of his support among center-right Republicans who so far have wavered but not completely turned against him." This is incorrect. It should be "the collapse of his support among far right Republicans." That is, the far right as opposed to the extreme far right. Center right republicans like Obama and Hillary are Democrats. People like Ocasio and Sanders are pretty much run of the mill Great Societ/New Dealer types. People need to get a grip. This is a conservative country.
5
The authors posit how the Republican Party can save itself from Trump. It doesn't tell us how the country can save itself from the Republican Party. The GOP has been in the thrall of "Malfactors of Great Wealth", as Teddy Roosevelt called them and an unbroken string of demagogues from Father Coughlin to Senator Joe McCarthy to the Brietbart/Bannon/Hannity/Ingraham quadriga of right-wing info-pornstars since the 1930s. It's probable that a Pence Presidency will animate and enhance the grip of the of Billionaire-Citizens United with Foxy right wing media and a legion of right wing false prophets that will make us all wish for a return (for a little while) to Trump's mendacity, incompetence and laziness.
God help us because the GOP will not!
10
Pence would be a disaster but Trump is showing us what people living in dictatorships already know: democracy only works when the people on top allow it to. Once they start ignoring the norms and expectations of respect for the constitution and its checks and balances there is little that those not in power can do - until election time. At least we still hope so.
7
A process that results in the nomination of Donald Trump as the candidate for President of a major political party is clearly broken. It may be time to go back to smoke-filled rooms.
5
The GOP is sticking with Trump come hell or high water.
6
Is this some sort of chamomile tea for Times readers? Go write this on Fox, see if you can sway any fellow Rs there.
4
The Republican party is one huge argument for massive constitutional reform.
The Electoral College is anti-democratic and has proven to be a way to force minority rule on the nation.
The Senate is archaic; the imperative of protecting states equally in Congress was justified by the colossally immoral view that slavery had to be protected. There is no issue that now can possibly condone the incredible underweighing of votes in more populated states that the Senate institutionalizes.
Gerrymandering skews the House, which is too small to effectively represent actual people across the country, and campaign finance laws held by the Supreme Court to be intrusions on billionaire free speech rights have caused Congress to be a bastion of corruption.
The federal judiciary is being stacked with ideologues from the Federalist Society, with 80 percent of Trump's nominees affiliated with that radical organization even though only about 5 percent of all lawyers are, and we have the most right-wing majority on the Supreme Court since the group that tried to derail the New Deal. We would have avoided that danger had Mitch McConnell not assumed the power to decide who gets to sit on the Court.
Our military is so busy staffing imperial commands all over the world that it leaves defense of our nation to the national guard, the Department of Homeland Security, and police officers. We don't need soldiers on borders; we need members of the armed forces here at home to be part of communities.
14
Send this to Fox...maybe a small dent in conservative thinking will occur. As I wrote in my comment, your constitution (I am Canadian) was written 250 years ago by white men in an era of horse drawn transportation and rudimentary communications. It needs amendments and reform to bring it into the 21st century.
2
My question is very simple; Minus Trump, what will Republicans do with the mess of this nation? For the eight years of the Obama Administration, the party was quite content to simply sit around and say "no." It was opposed to climate change efforts, health care reform, judicial appointments and and anything related to gun violence legislation. The party at one time was very opposed to any legislation that would increase the nation's debt and deficits but that opposition flew out the window once it controlled the presidency and the Congress.
So, again....minus Trump, what are their policy proposals to get us out of this mess? To date, I've seen nothing and I suspect they would be hard-pressed to answer this question with any other answer than "no." And that isn't an answer.
16
A few observations:
First, Mike Pence is a creature of the Koch Bros, owned lock, stock, and barrel. The Kochs may decide they like the idea of impeaching Trump, and they hold great sway over the Senate.
Second, in 2018 the House GOPs started winnowing down to the hardest right Freedom (sic) Caucus types with safe seats as long as they leave no space for a primary challenge from their right. Senate districts (states) aren’t gerrymandered.
Third, Pelosi is doing a good job of squeezing McConnell and co. up against the reality that they have to deal with Trump.
That all argues for the possibility of impeachment, or a deal for resignation. Either would be a bad thing, only removing Trump, the tip of the iceberg. The best thing for the country is that Trump hangs on, dragging the Republican Party down with him. Once Trump is gone, the GOPs will argue that Trump was the problem, they got rid of Trump, and we can trust them now. But we can’t, Trump is the symptom, the Republican Party is the disease.
14
Trump and the other evil climate crisis denying liars are the threat to our national security. The are traitors to all of mankind and a war on our children.
5
The Republicans are reckless with no foresight into the consequences of their actions long term. Our government just told us they are being prudent and squirrelling some taxes away for a rainy day as there's an economic slump that has hit China and Europe. Has the Republican even once mentioned consequences of an economic downturn in China and Europe? All they keep saying is the economy is doing great. You can't build an economy on a housing boom because that's influenced by global factors and a ponzi housing scheme doomed to collapse. Your government is also irresponsible because it did away with laws that protected the economy from irresponsible loans and business practises. Government needs to have strict laws in place so as to stop economic and property crashes like in the past. It's greed and just living in the present, for short term gains, that makes the Republican party irresponsible. You can't deregulate the banking and business system without it having consequences down the line. Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it.
8
Republicans don’t believe in government regulation. They believe in the anarchy of the market making the best choices for everyone. And their everyone is the 1% crowd.
3
In my mind republicans are completely irrelevant. At this point we're awash in the sleaziest tabloid culture, courtesy of the WH and his complicit wall of supporters.
How we're going to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness, that's the question.
Beyond disgusting!
11
No no and no. WE get us out of this mess by UN-ELECTING Republicans for conspiring in it through support of Trump.
9
What's not to like?
Paul Ryan got to molest labor and health.
Chuck Grassley got the inheritance tax removed.
Orrin Hatch finally got Bears Ears all to himself.
Sessions stacked the courts for private jails.
Cornyn and Cotton and Graham got lots of war.
Blackstone got 30 billion from the Saudis.
And states build bombs for 310 billion and soon Mexico will pay for a concrete wall akin to China's.
All it costs are children in cages, an over taxed underpayed busy labor force controlled by laws surrounding Citizens United, families scrutinized by ICE and parents deported with no idea where their children are while in Yemen 40 thousand babies have died from malnutrition and thousands more by our bombs, that's all.
Meanwhile these confederates organized by the Heritage Foundation spearheaded by McConnell enjoy plantation style land ownership gating out the masses and making them pay for vouchers that will educate a master race of the confederate minded citizens thriving off of the America First and their death of the weak, home of the might and land of strip mines and hog farms.
8
Our country and its institutions have been "hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself...if engaged in by a Democrat, it would have been denounced as corrupt, incompetent and even treasonous." That says it all. Thank you for a well-written, brave, and coherent call to arms to deal with this president. Will the GOP listen? Probably not. Their eyes on the short-term gains is subsumed to any decency and justice. They will come to regret it. There is no courage, just self-preservation at the expense of the rest of us.
8
“Rural”, “Evangelical”, “non-college-educated” etc. are simply over-broad euphemisms for stupidity and ignorance. Better to come out and say that Trump’s base is the stupid and the ignorant,
You can’t cure stupidity, but these people are easily led. We’ve allowed Fox News and radio hosts to do that leading. The sheep need a more benevolent shepherd, not an awakening they’re incapable of.
By the way, “Trexit” is definitely the Word of the Day. May it come soon!
13
Trump only goes down when Fox News turns on him and begins reporting fair and balanced news.
4
Thanks for the laugh!
2
Republicans always win. They are not stopping their cult-like propaganda and fascism. Democrats eat their own and have circular firing squads...and we wonder why they never win.
I still think democrats are the Washington generals of politics.
3
The GOP is an outlaw unAmerican organization. It's members should be arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia & Iran
6
The authors, paid republican mouthpieces working for republican organizations, know that trump is indefensible. That said, they attempt the only strategy that they can in order to get published in the NYT and still get paid by repubs for their propaganda - "let the repub party heal itself and solve its' own problems once trump is no longer president".
Why bother reading or publishing this sad attempt at spin? I for one will never, repeat never, consider a repub politician or position as worthy of my vote or consideration. For the rest of my life.
repubs have proven to be unworthy partners in our democracy due to pay for play politics, non-stop attacks and disenfranchisement upon the average voter and an obvious disdain for our Constitution.
That includes all three branches of our government - the most egregious of which is the judicial branch. They should all be driven out of office and all the halls of government - along with their racist base - permanently.
5
If Trump's continued 90% approval rating among Republicans doesn't scare you, then I recommend that you 1) watch "Get me Roger Stone" on Netflix, and then 2) watch one of the "Dictators" shows on the National Geographic channel. If you don't see a similarity, you have your head in the ground!
I think it would be far better for our country if Republicans woke up to their error and moved quickly to stop Trump, and much more damaging to our country if Democrats impeached Trump.
5
The Republican Party does not deserve the wilderness they need to be sent to outer space never to return and a new saner party to replace them. We need the racists and the ignorant to crawl back into their caves and let the more enlightened run the show.
5
Mr. Kerlow’s illustration says it all. The Trump years have devalued the credibility and reputation
of “Republicans” and “evangelical Christians”. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
3
To understand Trump is to recognize the man has only two values, the dollar and himself. This being the case he accepts the economy as his own doing and its success as his reward. His lack of economic understanding leads him to overlook the facts that the stock market's performance has largely been the result of unusually low interest rates and the beneficiaries are the upper quarter of our population. He is enamored by the high employment statistics and avoids recognizing the almost flat income curve for the wage earner. He has no recognition that the average family in America is 30% behind its economic worth of 15 years ago. In short, our president is economically ignorant of what lies ahead if America doesn't look out for its shrinking middle class and growing poverty population.
3
Trump HATES being president. He's a grifter who flew too close to his own ego and the Russians gave him the presidency. Now he is looking for an out, as is his pathetic base. Both will never admit wrong or fault, so it's about making Trump leave and say "I'm bored now because I was the greatest president in the history of the universe and can do nothing wrong." He will go and then be arrested or skip town.
5
The authors failed to mention one glaring factor: PUTIN
3
You're too kind in calling it a "mess".
3
Trexit — perfect!
4
The "R's" won't do anything until they get everything they want under this fool. why remove one for another? then again who's the fool here, Congress or us for voting this "lesser of two evils" in? we got what we paid for here unfortunately. VOTE!
2
Nixon did not have FOX News as his own special propaganda wing man and Trump surely does. So until Sean and FOX and Friends desert him, nobody else will, I'm sure.
It's all so sickening to have a mobster as president. "Nice country ya got there, it'd be a shame for something to happen to it".
Yes, indeed. Mobsters one and all of them. And if people like Susan Collins thinks she can skate free with this, I have to say: No way. You are complicit. You all know, you supposed 'moderates' that he's unfit and yet you do and say nothing.
100% complicit. And we will remember.
8
We the people don't choose our leaders based on opinion polls, and this is no time to start doing something so stupid and dangerous.
2
Part of the reason Trump's support among Republicans is above 90% is because any one with any sense of decency, who isn't utterly invested in the Limbaugh/Coulter narrative of Christian white-guy victimization by the "Elites" and the evil government and the lazy brown rapists, has left the party. In other words, it's not really the Republican party anymore.
5
Sage advice from the author of “Big Money and Backroom Deals are Good for Democracy.” There’s a reason why the average joes of the world have turned on these people and voted for Trump. Enough of this elitist garbage. You ruling class guys don’t care about America. You only care about yourselves and your little clique of like-minded fools.
GOP politicians are following the lead of their voters. What would it take for right-aligned voter opinion to turn against Trump? Probably sustained condemnation by Fox News. Which in turn would only happen if Trump were caught on tape slandering Christian conservatives as useful idiots and swearing fealty to Putin in one breath. We can't hold out for that.
The only truly healthy development is for Trump to get primaried and to lose, to somebody like Nikki Haley or (a rebooted) Marco Rubio, or Jeff Flake. The -right- has to get its house in order; we can't make the sanity and security of our nation depend on consistent voter support for Democrats. And politicians aren't really even -supposed- to "have spines" independent of their voters'. So it's on the populace. Are you patriots with different ideas? Or are you really deplorables? The world finds out in 2020.
2
Ya, next they can extort/blackmail Bill Gates.
1
Uhhh, fellows...
As I recall - BOTH the House and Senate have to approve any replacement candidate for Vice-president...
Here it is...
“...Section 2....
“...Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress...
.....
Though, Pelosi’s shown great leadership and competence at being next-in-line behind Pence...
So – no worry, on either side of the aisle...
PS
If it’s Pence giving the SOTU in 2020 – the GOP could still designate Perry as their survivorer...
Probably prudent to check the yearbooks first, though...
1
“The president’s behavior is becoming more erratic and bizarre, and his own aides have confided that he is ‘unhinged.’”
Trump’s increasingly unbalanced behavior may in part be a consequence of his habitual lying.
One obvious consequence is that relatively few people even take Trump at his word anymore. While it’s difficult to know for sure, I suspect even those who surround him have difficulty taking his words at face value. However, a deeper and more self-damning consequence with possible psychological ramifications is at work: Trump has lied so thoroughly that he has lost the ability to trust virtually anyone else. He has become a tortured prisoner of his own mendacity. As George Bernard Shaw once put it, “The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.”
5
A prudent. cautious government would be informing the public that there is an economic downturn in China and Europe and that everything is not great, so as to inform the USA public to be cautious in their business transactions and loan borrowing, as there are clouds on the horizon.
2
Those who control the GOP have spent more than four decades carefully crafting a constituency that feels victimized by the cultural and economic changes that have engulfed the nation since the ‘60’s. They’ve been programmed to reject facts, and to fear those who look, worship, or love different from them. The only way they’ve periodically won elections is through the complacency of the rest of us and by gerrymandering and voter suppression.
The problems for them are (1) the constituency they’ve created is dying off, (2) the new majority firmly rejects the GOP nihilism and is also becoming more politically active, and (3) any changes the GOP might take to broaden its appeal will be firmly rejected by its base. They’re in a no-win position of their own making, and Trump is driving their bus right into the “wall” they created.
5
Good Luck with that! So far they have been working all they can to continue this mess.
1
"But they do have a parachute -- one named Mike Pence ...who would continue the president's policies."
God help us if you see Mike Pence as the ethical salvation of the Republican party. Please remember that he was up to his Stepford eyeballs in Trump's shenanigans as transition chief. I hope that Mueller catches Pence in his investigative net too so that we aren't faced with the Sophie's Choice of either leaving 45 in office or having Pence in that position.
7
Excellent article, but then the authors close with “Of course, Mr. Trump’s exit is a long shot.” Wrong IMO.
The authors state that removal depends on the collapse of support among the center-right Republicans. They state that such collapse and removal might be inevitable if one of five events were to occur: 1. Clear criminality; 2. Economic recession; 3. Crisis mismanagement; 4. Continued deterioration of the president’s behavior; and 5. Likely Trump defeat in 2020. They add that they would be surprised if some combination of these events did not occur. I would suggest that it is a near certainty.
It seems to me that, instead of such removal damaging the GOP, it could be the move that saves the party. A new Republican coalition would denounce Trumpism and reassert all policies acceptable to the center-right. They could sell themselves as the party of unity and denounce the Democrats as the dysfunctional party of divisiveness. Pence would be replaced by a Romney type candidate for 2020. This might well prove to be the salvation of the Republican Party.
3
The final paragraph in this editorial is perfect. I don't believe Republicans are listening or care.
3
Dream on folks ... bottom line: the voters will decide in 2020.
1
This is whistling past the graveyard. The article's fundamental assumption "In the long run, a third or so of the country cannot effectively govern the other two-thirds with an unpopular agenda and a Twitter account" is not true. Many democracies are dominated by minority blocs at various times of their histories, including the present. Trump's continuing support in the rural states ensures his electoral college reelection. It also gives Republicans a continuing shot at controlling the Senate. The only way out is severe damage from his policies to those rural voters. Trump may actually achieve this thru his China tariffs, but even he is probably not that stupid.
3
Why we will lose Trump as our least favorite antagonist in history will be Mr. Trump’s mismanagement of a crisis similar to the government shutdown or a losing confrontation with the NorthKoreans or China and perhaps both. Another would be the continued deterioration of the president’s behavior. The core of Trump’s constituency remains rural, evangelical and the uneducated ‘no college’ crowd. What an un-attractive blend.
1
I'm sorry, but the GOP's come to Jesus moment should have come after the Bush administration. Both their domestic and international policies were based on lies and carried out by hacks and grifters. Whether it was Afghanistan, Iraq, Katrina, the Crash, the environment, voter suppression--almost everything W. did garbage, and he did it with the full support of the GOP. And yet, despite the public outrage, almost nobody was held accountable. W. and his minions were given a pass, largely out of embarassment and a desire to "move on." And so instead of showing contrition, the GOP responded by embracing the Tea Party, Birtherism, gerrymandering, more voter-suppression, and eventually Trump. It is true that America would be better off with a decent, respectable conservative party. But considering it's been decades since the GOP has been anything close to that, it seems highly unlikely for them to reverse course now. Anyone unwilling to denounce both the Trump AND Bush administrations will have zero credibility with non-partisans. Sure, the DNC has it's share of nuts--hello, Virginia!--but at least they try to weed them out. The GOP is so completely overrun by mendacious crooks that it might be beyond saving.
4
Seriously?
I would take Trump over Pence. At least with Trump it's clear what you get--- chaos, cronyism, an all out effort to put the Fox in charge of the henhouse and criminal activities (the authors quaintly conclude there is as yet no "clear evidence" of crime--maybe they should start reading the New York Times)
With Pence you get all the above with a facade of self-righteous Christian triumphalism intelligently(?) designed to artificially elevate the white and wealthy and exert economic and social control over the rest of us.
Nah. Given the choice between two devils, I'll take the guy who persisted in "presidential harassment" against Barack Obama over the guy who would pray for me while stabbing me to death with the shiv of his self-serving convictions.
6
May the Repulican Party die soon. It could be replaced by "moderates," some a little to the left and some a little to the right--as the Democratic Party becomes the Social Democratic Party.
3
The phrase "When pigs fly" comes to mind while reading this.
Also -
"the idea that political parties exist not just as vehicles for politicians but as protectors of vital democratic norms."
This is not an "idea." This is a fairy tale. Has been since Nixon.
Republicans will do nothing to oppose their wannabe emperor. Their souls were sold long ago.
3
In a word, "Trexit." Well coined.
1
Republicans have to win. This "Opinion" is a playbook showing how they can keep their win and save face. The only problem with it is they have already lost face. They have won by cheating (McConnell), and not opposing Trumps rise (the Party). They won. Trump has delivered for them so now they can pretend he is not one of them. Nice ploy... if you can sell it.
I just hope Speaker Pelosi, senate Democrats and the American people, will not take the bait.
3
Most Republicans I know are over 50 or live in the South. These demographics will not keep them in power (especially with southern populations changing drastically over the next 10 years).
I already feel the pendulum swinging away from the greed, corruption, and lies defining a Republican party now failing to maintain power. The party smells of desperation and rot. They have no fresh ideas, no message that appeals to the under-50 group, no interest or desire to solve the crises looming on the horizon like climate change and health care. They will also have no credibility after sticking by Trump and his foreign frenemies.
This article shows what I believe: a movement is afoot and the Democrats are finally growing a spine. Republicans enjoy what you have left in this moment, for your obstinance, narrow-mindedness, and negativity will be your undoing, just like what the Confederates experienced years ago. Read your history books.
2
Removing a cancerous melanoma from ones face is both painful and ugly at the time, but often necessary to save the patient.
2
The problem here is that the Republican party would have to start telling its white, rural, evangelical base the truth, that immigrants are not coming to murder them, that abortion is a right that can't be taken away, that global warming is real and that the government has a role to play in guaranteeing a social safety net. Of course the plutocrats that fund the party have no interest in any of this.
4
Don't expect the Republicans to get us out of this mess. The most important class I ever took in college was Logic 101, and I believe it saved me many times. Voters are victims of their own emotions and personal affiliations. If supporters remain loyal despite his multiple transgressions and general incompetence, it's because they hate to admit they were wrong, or they don't want to see the damage that is being done. Or, they just don't really care who's President as long as their personal situation is just fine. Americans need to stop following their instincts and use the power of reason. It's supposed to be one of the attributes that separates us from many other primates. Right now we look like a troop of monkeys.
5
Two words: dream on.
1
This piece is continued evidence of the incestuous relationship between the 'Times and GOP Never Trumpers.
Please 'Times, how about some original & truly thought-provoking editorial writing for a change?
I have often wondered just how big this base is...take a poll of Fox viewers, Rush listeners? Really, are the Republicans afraid of relatively few folks as opposed to those they are turning off??
The party would probably gain many independents by standing up th trump and DUMPING Mitch McConnell.
In truth both these terribly negative, no -forward movement, so called leaders have become an embarrassment to what was a very credible political party a very long time ago!
1
An interesting article—but I disagree with one point. Pence is not a viable parachute. Trump in untenable, it is true. Pence might be even more scary. A self righteous, born again hypocrite such as Trump can do and has done irreparable damage to American democracy. Trump is a mendacious, oleaginous, bigoted criminal. Is Pence any better or will he turn America into Gilead?
2
Two of the MANY things you have to have beltway brainworms to see:
-moderate rebels in Syria
-center-right Republicans in the US
The Republican Party will never be able to “reclaim decency” with Republicans like Senator McConnell in it, let alone running the Senate.
2
"It [the Republican Party] has allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality television star who is a pathological liar, emotionally unsteady and accountable only to himself."
Who are you talking about here? Rush Limbaugh? Newt Gingrich? Jerry Falwell? Dick Cheney? Roger Ailes? Bill O'Reilly? Matt Drudge? Glenn Beck? Dinesh D'Souza? Pat Robertson? Anne Coulter? Shawn Hannity? Mark Levin? Steve Bannon? Alex Jones?
Wait, you're talking only about Trump? What about the long list of Rightwing wackos that started hijacking the Republican Party more than 30 years ago?
In other words: Trumpism didn't begin with Trump. He's merely the apotheosis of what the Republicans/Rightwingers have been doing within the party for the more than a generation: ignoring factual info; promulgating lies; fomenting divisiveness solely for partisan gain; and propagating hatred of both fellow Americans and other countries.
The Republican Party has been rotting from within for decades. Trump is just a lesion, a boil on the skin. Merely lancing the boil won't get rid of the underlying infection. The only potential cure is a full-blown lobotomy.
2
When Trump is seen as an avatar to "revolutionize" government once and for all; when being a bull in the china shop is seen as the only way to do it; then having a fever begins to look like a virtue, not an illness.
The Republican party may be self-immolating, but those hanging on seem to believe it is a cause worth fighting for.
Or something like that. That's best that I can parse it today. Ask me again tomorrow.
1
It may be possible that of all people Jeff Bezos may deliver the final blow to Dump. His push back on AMI's attempt at extortion may reveal why so many formally right wing Senators (Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz come to mind) have bowed to Dump. An important question---what pics/texts/emails does AMI have on Lindsay & Lyin' Ted. This could come out assuming Bezos takes AMI to court. If AMI has been extorting Senators on behalf of Dump then it is all over.
3
I don't know who these "journalists" have been talking to or where else other than their usual echo chambers they go to listen to other people's opinions but I can say this:
They aren't talking to anyone outside of their liberal enclaves.
The rest of America is fine with President Trump. Especially after watching all the planned negative attacks and multiple proven accounts of distributing "fake news" such as in the Covington teen's case. The liberal media is insane.
America recognizes the political Left's intentions to undermine this country economically ( Green Deal) and spiritually (infanticide). That's why Trump is untouchable. He's all that stands now between Americans and the evil that is the political Left.
Ah, "Trexit", I love it!
1
The Republican Congressmen who hooted and hollered USA USA! at trumps " speech" sounded like a group of fascist frat boys. What a shocking lack of decorum!
As if we are the only country on the planet that matters.
There is no more Republican party.
However, there is a group of neo- fascist corporate masters who think of nothing other than plundering the earth and turning over public lands to destruction.
God save us.
3
Ha ha ha ha. Funniest headline I read all year. Maybe get published in The Onion. Dream on!
Republicans might have gotten us “into this mess”, but they are only cat’s paws for the billionaire Oligarchs that own the GOP. When these wealthy wackos decide to pull the plug, and only then, Trump will go.
2
This entire piece is a pipe-dream. Just as pickles do not become cucumbers again, the Republican party will not "uncorrupt" itself. To paraphrase ex-Republican Max Boot, the party must be destroyed.
2
They created Trump.
2
I do not want the conservatives or the Republicans to help us, I want them to go down with the crook with which they stuck us!
1
There is a cult quality to the support in the population for this man. He can do no wrong and there is no reasoning with his followers. They will not be shamed by his opponents into abandoning him. Decades of shaming by liberals is probably the root of their blind devotion. They have been shamed for racist and sexist attitudes, for working with their hands and tractors instead of their brains and computers, for their literal and moralistic interpretation of the Bible, and their subservience to employers which they call "work ethic." As long as that 90% of self-identified Republicans remains enthralled, the men (and a few women) they send to Congress and statehouses will stand up and roar approval for anything their cult's leader says and does and the only way to remove him and them will be at the ballot box.
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@abigail49
Republicans and Democrats support unregulated immigration, offshoring of manufacturing and forever wars. They keep R voters in line with God and racism they keep you in line with envy and your sense of moral and intellectual superiority.
Do you really support having troops in Syria and Iraq? Do you think we need more than the at least 10 million undocumented immigrants here now? Do you think it's a good idea economicly or environmentally to send more manufacturing to China. Both parties do. Trump doesn't.
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@abigail49
Nice try. But stoking that old "Urban vs. Rural" argument isn't working because even those of us living in big coastal cities recognize and appreciate the work of those Americans who use their hands and tractors to keep this country nourished.
However what isn't acceptable is the racist and sexist attitudes that this president and Republicans have managed to drape in a flag, while calling themselves "Patriots".
For that reason alone, voters should think twice before electing them into office.
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@abigail49 I know of no one among the college-educated who shames people for working with their hands. I request that rural people stop propagating this belief. What I see is defensiveness among rural people.
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I think not only that the unimaginable is impossible, but that the authors are fantasists who fundamentally misunderstand the Republican Party. The DEMOCRATS are a center-right party even by the standards of the Anglosphere. The Republicans have been a far-right party committed to minority rule of the sort they say is impossible at least since Trump won the nomination in May 2016.
1
Did Trump ever appear in black-face? That might get some to call on him to resign. But him?
At the same time frat boys were doing black-face, Trump was barring black people from his apartment buildings, blaming the innocent Central Park Five, making black employees leave the floor of his casino, and pushing birtherism.
Nothing he does seems to matter.
942
@midwesterner Unfortunately, Trump's redlining was being done by most people in the real estate industry in New York at the time he was doing it. Unethical, yes, but not particularly Trumpian.
2
@Jenifer Wolf The same thing was happening in Houston Texas while I was the manager of a large apartment building. When the owner told me I could not rent to a black couple was the first time I quit a well paying job on principle. It didn't happen in the 1980's. It was more like in the late 1960's.
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@Jenifer Wolf
His father was arrested at a KKK rally in the 1920s - most people were not doing that! And most people were not redlining either. If they were, it wasn't right then, and it isn't right now. Not to mention all the other racist things he's said and done. Don't you ever get tired of making excuses for him?
7
I suppose this piece is logical but the inference I drew from it is that the gop's only problem is Trump; that his election was some sort of anomaly. This is far from reality.
They've cynically embraced this guy for their own ends for trump was just a means. The gop ,like trump, is concerned with only themselves. Trump is not their problem to fix, their policies are their problems. Like trump, there is no real philosophy, or idealogy, just plain self serving avarice. Their "problem" caused the election of this guy. They are the problem.
5
Usually, complex problems do not have simple solutions. But, in this case, a simpler solution is at hand. If moderate Republicans join centrist Democrats to forge bipartisan agreements on immigration, budget and taxes, healthcare reform, and other pressing issues, they will create a veto-proof bloc of legislators. This is not as hard as it might seem since they previously have reached agreements on immigration reform and the Obama's Affordable Care Act was based on a Republican model. Moderate Republicans fear primary challenges by more strident conservatives, but they would have many successes to point to with their constituents. It would be harder to achieve the same super-majority to force Trump from office than to make him irrelevant.
1
The Republican base does not want democracy. They want political power and control over America. They are very happy using gerrymandering, voter suppression, the archaic Electoral College and the US Senate (which are both vestiges of slavery) and unlimited campaign donations from the billionaires to control this nation.
Democracy is slowing dying in America. Hopefully the 2020 election will reverse that.
4
It's really simple. GOP wants power and money. That's it. That's all that matters to them.
3
@Noley We all the economy is good...until it isn't. Then what?
No, I do not want Trump to resign or be impeached. I fear Pence would only be a more right wing zealot with God on his side, or at least he would profess it to be so.
Trump's comeuppance needs to come at the hand of the voters.
No other punishment will break his will as the denial of another term. His ego will be shattered and perhaps he can then find the hole he came out of to crawl back into.
4
No refuge for Trump and no quick forgiveness for the GOP. Jail and decades of shame are in order for the lot of them. Even now at this moment - he struts like a Mussolini and his Republican enablers stand and smile and applaud. There must be severe consequences. There must be, or I will forever after consider America a broken remnant of what the founders birthed and the Lincoln's, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt's and Eisenhower's strove to nurture. Note all the Republicans listed. There is nothing close to any of them alive in the GOP today - in fact today's GOP is the enemy of what those leaders once stood for.
3
What we will see in the next two years is a Siege of the Trump and the GOP by the Dems. The GOP will circle the wagons. Trump will be the GOP candidate in 2020. 90% of GOP support Trump. But their base is shrinking as old stalwarts die off. Trump could be the beginning of the end for the GOP. Trump biggest accomplishment in the end will be to reenergize the Democratic party and to destroy the GOP. The GOP is a rotting corpse.
3
Just read that the Australian Federal Parliament computer system has been hacked and 9 News is suggesting that it could be the work of China or Russia so as to undermine peoples faith in the democratic system as there is an election looming in Australia. Sound familiar? The reporter suggested it's not unlike what happened during the last USA election. How to stop foreign governments hacking with the intention of influencing the outcome of general elections and trying to destabilise our citizens faith in democratic institutions? What say you!
2
The idea that Republicans of this era are capable of fixing or improving anything is pure magical thinking.
1
"Whether [collapse of Trump's support] happens depends on future events, the most ominous of which would be the discovery of clear criminality by the president or those closest to him," write Rauch and Wehner.
Or maybe not. Journalist David Roberts, who has explored the epistemological question deeply, warns that "America is facing an epistemic crisis," and wonders: "What if Mueller proves his case and it doesn’t matter?"
https://tinyurl.com/y854qov5
The "epistemic crisis" pervades a society increasingly untethered from objective reality. Trump has long and systematically sought to delegitimize Mueller, and national institutions such as law enforcement and intelligence too. The political right in particular occupies a hermetically sealed information bubble.
Maybe there's nothing Mueller can say that will have an effect on Republicans.
If that is so, it has grave implications for the future of democracy.
3
This piece has got me to wondering. Jeff Foxworthy, the long-time comedian and self-described authority on all things "redneck," will appear at an Albuquerque-area casino tomorrow. I can't help but wonder how big of a crowd he'll draw. Time has undoubtedly eroded his popularity, but I think something else is at work. Before Trump, rural people, as Foxworthy for years humorously, cleverly, and yet respectfully presented them, were merely unsophisticated. But Trump's election lifted the rock even further, and now we know these same people to be racist, willfully ignorant, homophobic, misogynic, embittered, drug-addicted. You'll not find me at the Foxworthy show, but I'd be curious to know how he plays Trump and his rabid supporters.
1
The GOP will get rid of their president when pigs fly. Without planes.
Yes, the GOP got us into this mess with decades-long premeditated assault on the middle class and the poor, destruction of the unions and dilution of civil rights. With Trump, the party lost the last tatter of credibility it may have once had.
Republicans will never change except for the worse, to the alt-right, radical right. They won't bend. It's not just Trump, but McConnell, McCarthy, Ryan, Boehner, Gingrich, Reagan, the Bushes, Hastert, Lott, et al., and the whole gang of goons beholden to nobody but lobbyists and Grover Norquist.
They sold out to the lowest common denominator, Trump's infamous base. They peddle racism, hate and fear. They lie about democratic socialism, equating it with Stalin. They propagandize this country as the best in the world in everything and to say otherwise is unpatriotic.
Why would they get rid of Trump now if they put him there in the first place? When their only interest is maintaining power and attendant cash and perks, getting rid of the goose that laid a big fat orange egg is not going to happen.
We should concentrate on getting rid of the GOP.
3
The Republicans surely must know they are setting the standards for the next Democratic president. What will be their criticisms of the next Democratic president if even a small percentage of the chaos, ineptitude, corruption, and laziness of the Trump administration occurs?
Republicans need to look beyond 2020 and even 2024 and realize by refusing to shackle this monster they have created, they are laying the blueprint for complete dysfunction if not posing an outright threat to our democracy.
1
90% approval rating among republicans??? Says a lot about todays republicans and its not good.
3
As personally repugnant as The President's style may be to many, and I hear that all the time from true Republicans, his laser focus on REAL ISSUES and moving forward to restructure the world (Iran, North Korea, NATO, Immigration, business taxes etc. etc.) is how his approval rating has now gotten to 50%. This is mostly because he wants to avoid being the world's policeman and make America the industrial powerhouse that it was during the last half of the last century.
RESULTS in the face of media and irrational socialists now populating the left.
Mr. Trump delivers his self-serving messianic opinion of himself regularly as "news" and it is eagerly lapped up by the TTBs (Trump True Believers).
It is ever shocking to this fact-based brain to realize how "belief" preferentially trumps(!) facts for a significant percentage of the human race.
Obama dragged us back (against huge Republican headwinds) from the abyss and set us upon an eight-year upward trajectory with momentum to carry us to this point ...as stark a beginning and end point as can be found in our economic history (FDR excepted), and he is dismissed as a feckless imposter. Trump, the feckless imposter, is hailed as god-sent savior and economic miracle maker.
Go figure. Tribe trumps sense.
2
While any patriotic American agrees that Trump is a complete disaster and disgrace to America, we also see that his Republican Party has no real desire to remove him from office. Far from the author’s claims that Trump is an aberration, he actually reflects exactly what the Republican Party is and has been for decades. Republicans have only paid lip service to constitutional norms, morality and decency, while typifying gender and racial bigotry and lust for money, power and sex. The election eleven years ago of the first African-American President was the impetus for Republicans to bring their essential nature out into the open. That the vast majority of Republicans voted for, and continue to happily support, the most mentally, emotionally and morally unfit man ever to sit in the Oval Office isn’t a break from their nature, it is their nature on full display.
1
I'm a republican and can't stand Trump. I think he's a pretty despicable person. The Democrats elected Trump by #1 - putting Hilary forth as the Democratic candidate #2 - creating division with identity politics and #3 The liberal media not taking Trump seriously and predicting a Hilary landslide.
1
I think a crash and burn is the surest way of ridding the GOP of the malevolent influence of the top money supporters of the GOP, i.e., the Mercers and the Kochs, et al.
It may well take several years wandering in the wilderness for the GOP.
Learn the "money corrupts" lesson, and learn it well.
And let the bloody results be a cautionary tale for the Democrats.
The federal government has three branches. The Congress has two houses. Bad writing, bad editing to talk of "the two branches of Congress..."
The republican party is too weak-spined to take out DJT in favor of Pence, and I for one am glad for that. Pence is not only vanilla in character, under that facade appears by many accounts to be a (mentally) sick man. I'd rather have the sickness out in the open, so people know about it and voters respond to it, than hidden behind of facade of normalcy so repubs can do their dirty deeds without any public taint. They supported him, they have to live with him. I don't want to see a mimicking of DJT's modis operandi - make a mess, clean it up, take credit as a savior. They deserve to burn in this dumpster fire they created.
1
Mr. Pence as president? Please recall who suggested him as Vice President...Mr. Manafort! Need we say more.
1
Fantasy time. Trump is the GOP, the GOP is Trump. Far from being the anomaly the article tries to portray him as, Trump is the epitome, the apotheosis of Republicanism the past 40 years, since that evil gnome Newt Gingrich began the destruction of our political rhetoric 40 years ago. Trump just says out loud what they all say over a few bourbons at the club, when the immigrant help is out of earshot.
Trump is a traitor, in Putin's pocket, as is the rest of the treasonous Republican Party that knowingly and willingly put him there so they could please their real Owners, the Koch Brothers, and assorted plutocrats. The GOP is not a political party - it is an organized crime cabal impersonating a political party, and should be prosecuted and jailed under the RICO statutes.
There is no redemption for ANY Republican. From top to bottom they need to be expelled from our political life, and then investigated, indicted, arrested, tried and jailed for their 40 year assault on our democracy. No more bipartisan reaching out, no more kumbaya nonsense, no more reaching across the aisle to fascists who equate compromise with surrender. We demand JAIL for Republican criminals: from the traitor Trump and his crooked family and cronies, down to the rest of the crooked Republican Party that has aided and abetted his destruction of our country. From President and Congress to dogcatcher and school board member: NO MORE REPUBLICANS. NONE. NOT ONE.
2
From where I'm sitting and reading the NYT and a whole host of other publications every day, it looks like Trump has a better than 50-50 chance of winning in 2020.
The Democrats are embracing some silly socialist agenda, which is being propagated by some 29-year-old, ex-bartender, freshman congresswoman from the Bronx.
2
Please note that Donald Trump has been a lying, scheming, racist, proudly ignorant buffoon for several decades. The only difference today is that the GOP has "leaders" who feel Trump's behavior is appropriate and "Presidential."
When GOP partisans like Rauch and Wehner loudly and unequivocally proclaim that Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan sold the party out for personal gain and power, I will believe they finally understand the problem and the necessary solution. For now, the two main culprits have not been held to any semblance of accountability.
1
Such nonsense.
Trump supports right wing judges and tax cuts and though he hasn't thought once of God since he prayed to get himself out of the '60's draft, also gives lip service to religion. He could be Satan in a clown suit with teenage girls on each arm and Republicans wouldn't care. As long as he does enacts hard partisan policies, he stays. Republicans are winning while Democrats wring their hands, like this column, about his eventual losing, at which point it will be too late. It's Mueller of its nothing.
“To them, if unemployment is low, the stock market strong and overall growth is solid, then everything else is just a matter of style.” So they are victims of the “cum hoc, ergo propter hoc” fallacy. Allow me to fearlessly predict that the moment the economy goes south these people will somehow twist this same fallacy into it being the fault of Ds in the House or the “witch hunt”.
1
I look forward to Donald’s “intake photo” of him sporting his new “Rikers Island” buzz cut.
As for his tan, that will fade to match his “eye pallor”.
1
Trump is not the only problem with the GOP. Trump is only a problem because he is indecorous. He is a loud-mouth firebrand jerk, but he is ham handed. Dick Cheney was quiet and crafty and undermined the entire US intelligence service to drum up a bunch of faked intelligence to get us into a new war. Trump has not done anything so bad (oh, there is the tax plan, but that was not Trump's idea). Let's see...oh and Nixon blew up a peace effort to end the Vietnam War so the could get elected. The GOP loves to put unqualified celebrities on the ballot to fool the people while rich and powerful interests make machinations from behind. There is very little to redeem what the GOP has been in my lifetime.
1
Just a whiner. Losing power. Nothing is said about destruction of the environment, taking away health care from people, destroying people's lives at the border, etc. Just a whining conservative bemoaning the fate of a party that does nothing but enrich itself as a tick on the body politic.
2
Very encouraging. I like that term.....Trexit.
It is my sincere hope that Mr. Trump continues as President for the next two years and that his idiocy leads the Republican Party to an electoral annihilation from which they never recover. The Republican Party has become a vile and destructive collection of hate-filled racists and traitors who care nothing about the Constitution, democracy or America. It is my sincere hope that the Republican Party dies and is replaced by a new party that, unlike Republicans, has morals. Maybe the Whigs can make a comeback.
On the bright side, despite being a demagogue, Trump is rather lazy and inept. What is terrifying is the thought of the ambitious and competent right-wing demagogue waiting in the wings.
3