Mitt Romney is usually not the most eloquent of public figures, but he got it right when he explained his increasingly lonely resistance to Trump: “I wanted my grandkids to see that I simply couldn’t ignore what Mr. Trump was saying and doing, which revealed a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world.”
.. Consider that for a moment. Trump’s argument, in essence, is that a judge of Hispanic origin should be disqualified from the case because Trump is so racist against Hispanics.
.. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), your claim to intellectual leadership of the Republican Party is forfeited by your endorsement of a man who mocks the high ideals you espouse.
.. GOP leaders who choose “party unity” over principle should know that there is no way back; when you embrace Trump, you make a decision that will stay with you forever.
.. Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), your future in politics will be undermined by your support of a nominee you once rightly called a “con artist.”
.. Donald Trump turns 70 next week. He is who he is.
Trump’s terror response has Republicans fretting anew
‘Every time you turn around, he’s said something new. It’s impossible for us to keep up,’ one GOP lawmaker complains.
.. Donald Trump’s combative anti-terrorism speech Monday flouted the typical post-tragedy script and left Republican insiders fretting that the business mogul is unprepared to play a crucial presidential role: national healer.
.. Many Republicans appeared downright fatigued by the almost daily exercise of Trump saying something provocative or worse, and them having to answer questions about it.
Several lawmakers opted to remain silent, apparently hoping this latest controversy would wash away with the next news cycle.
.. The speed with which Trump moved, as well as the immediate reaction by Democrats and the media, forced Republicans to develop a response in Trump’s wake.
.. Trump’s media-driven campaign helps him get his message out, but it leaves every other Republican scrambling to figure out how to live in a Trump-centric world.
The Unity Illusion
For starters, this line of thinking is deeply anticonservative. Conservatives believe that politics is a limited activity. Culture, psychology and morality come first. What happens in the family, neighborhood, house of worship and the heart is more fundamental and important than what happens in a legislature.
Ryan’s argument inverts all this. It puts political positions first and character and morality second. Sure Trump’s a scoundrel, but he might agree with our tax proposal. Sure, he is a racist, but he might like our position on the defense budget. Policy agreement can paper over a moral chasm. Nobody calling themselves a conservative can agree to this hierarchy of values.
.. The classic conservative belief, by contrast, is that character is destiny.
.. The Republican Party can’t unify around Donald Trump for the same reason it can’t unify around a tornado. Trump, by his very essence, undermines cooperation, reciprocity, solidarity, stability or any other component of unity. He is a lone operator, a disloyal diva,
.. By one theory narcissism flows from a developmental disorder called alexithymia, the inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. Sufferers have no inner voice to understand their own feelings and reflect honestly on their own actions.
.. To make decisions, these narcissists create a rigid set of external standards, often based around admiration and contempt. Their valuing criteria are based on simple division — winners and losers, victory or humiliation. They are preoccupied with luxury, appearance or anything that signals wealth, beauty, power and success. They take Christian, Jewish and Muslim values — based on humility, charity and love — and they invert them.
.. Other people are simply to be put to use as suppliers of admiration or as victims to be crushed as part of some dominance display.
Dump the G.O.P. for a Grand New Party
Today’s G.O.P. is to governing what Trump University is to education — an ethically challenged enterprise that enriches and perpetuates itself by shedding all pretense of standing for real principles, or a truly relevant value proposition, and instead plays on the ignorance and fears of the public.
.. Despite that, all top G.O.P. leaders say they will still support Donald Trump — even if he’s dabbled in a “textbook definition” of racism, as House Speaker Paul Ryan described it — because he will sign off on their agenda and can do only limited damage given our checks and balances.
.. as Senator Lindsey Graham rightly put it, there has to be a time “when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”
.. Et tu, John McCain? You didn’t break under torture from the North Vietnamese, but your hunger for re-election is so great that you don’t dare raise your voice against Trump? I hope you lose. You deserve to. Marco Rubio? You called Trump “a con man,” he insults your very being and you still endorse him? Good riddance.
.. This is exactly why so many Republican voters opted for Trump in the first place. They intuited that the only thing these G.O.P. politicians were interested in was holding onto their seats in office — and they were right. It made voters so utterly cynical that many figured, Why not inflict Trump on them? It’s all just a con game anyway