Trump is exactly what Republicans are not

The fundamental reason Trump isn’t a Republican is far bigger than words or policies. He stands in opposition to the founding principle of our party — that of a united country.

.. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, and our founding principle is our commitment to holding the nation together. This brought us into being just before the Civil War. The first resolution of the platform at the party’s first national convention states in part that “the union of the States must and shall be preserved.”

.. Now comes Trump, who is exactly what Republicans are not, who is exactly what we have opposed in our 160-year history. We are the party of the Union, and he is the most divisive president in our history. There hasn’t been a more divisive person in national politics since George Wallace.

.. It isn’t a matter of occasional asides, or indiscreet slips of the tongue uttered at unguarded moments. Trump is always eager to tell people that they don’t belong here, whether it’s Mexicans, Muslims, transgender people or another group. His message is, “You are not one of us,” the opposite of “e pluribus unum.” And when he has the opportunity to unite Americans, to inspire us, to call out the most hateful among us, the KKK and the neo-Nazis, he refuses.

.. But our party has been corrupted by this hateful man, and it is now in peril.

.. we Republicans must disassociate ourselves from Trump by expressing our opposition to his divisive tactics and by clearly and strongly insisting that he does not represent what it means to be a Republican.

Binyamin Netanyahu is soft on anti-Semitism when it suits him

The Jewish state chooses its battles carefully

ISRAEL has long seen itself as the protector of Jews everywhere and a bulwark against global anti-Semitism. It has brought prominent Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann to justice and it rescued Ethiopian Jews threatened by war and famine in the 1980s and 90s. Just last week it denounced a crass notice in a Swiss hotel telling “Jewish guests” to shower before entering the pool. So Israel’s government could reasonably have been expected to condemn the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, which featured neo-Nazis chanting “Jews will not replace us”, and to criticise the mealy-mouthed response by Donald Trump, whose presidency has energised the white-supremacist movement in America.

Instead, the anti-Semitic rally, which descended into violence, and Mr Trump’s tepid early comments were met with silence by the government in Jerusalem. Only after Mr Trump’s carefully scripted denunciation of “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups” did Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, issue a tweet saying, “Outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred.” Mr Netanyahu made no reference to where or when these expressions were made, or to who was making them. Nor did he react to Mr Trump’s later comments, which pinned blame for the violence on both the neo-Nazis and the people who turned out to oppose them.

 .. his reluctance to speak out against anti-Semitism in America is about more than that. Mr Netanyahu and his supporters seem to believe that the people opposing the white supremacists are at least as dangerous to Israel as the neo-Nazis. Take Mr Netanyahu’s son, Yair, who condemned the neo-Nazis on Facebook, but added that the counter-protesters of Antifa and Black Lives Matter “hate my country (and America too in my view) just as much” and “are getting stronger and stronger and becoming super dominant in American universities and public life”.
.. Even Rabbi Marvin Hier, who recited a prayer at Mr Trump’s inauguration, blasted him last week. “No one could ever compare neo-Nazis, the Klan and white supremacists to demonstrators that are demonstrating against them. To equate the two sides is preposterous,” said Rabbi Hier.
.. Mr Netanyahu and his Likud party have won three elections, in part by accusing the left and the media of undermining Israel’s security. This, along with the prime minister’s co-operation with Orthodox Jewish parties, has alienated those American Jews who identify with the opposition in Israel. To some it looks as if Mr Netanyahu only sees anti-Semitism in those who oppose his policies.
.. Consider his treatment of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister. Mr Orban’s government has been accused of running an anti-Semitic poster campaign against George Soros, a Jewish American financier with Hungarian roots who funds liberal causes, and organisations that are critical of Mr Orban.
..  Mr Orban, on the other hand, is one of Mr Netanyahu’s closest allies in Europe.

Why Lee Should Go, and Washington Should Stay

To me, the answer to Mr. Trump’s question begins with a straightforward test: Was the person to whom a monument is erected on public property devoted to the American experiment in liberty and self-government? Washington and Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were. Each owned slaves; each was largely a creature of his time and place on matters of race. Yet each also believed in the transcendent significance of the nation, and each was committed to the journey toward “a more perfect Union.”

.. By definition, the Confederate hierarchy fails that test. Those who took up arms against the Union were explicitly attempting to stop the American odyssey.

.. Monuments in public places of veneration to those who believed it their duty to fight the Union have no place in the Union of the 21st century — a view with which Lee himself might have agreed. “I think it wiser,” he wrote in 1866, “not to keep open the sores of war.”

.. In 1973, the Sons of Confederate Veterans raised money to install a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Southern cavalry commander and early leader of the Klan, in the state capitol.

Trump’s Fan-Service to His Base Is Tearing America Apart

The president doesn’t pretend to represent all citizens—just his most hardcore supporters.

 But if you listen closely to Trump’s remarks about the weekend clash in Charlottesville, they are actually much worse. The president goes out of his way to celebrate those who rallied under Nazi and white nationalists banners to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and to denounce the counter-protestors.“There were people in that rally—and I looked the night before,” Trump said, referring to Friday. “If you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people: neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them. But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest—because you know, I don’t know if you know, they had a permit.” By contrast, Trump scorned the counter-protesters, whom he called the “alt-left,” saying they “came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent.”

.. On that supposedly peaceful Friday night, they chanted “Jews will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “blood and soil.” Speakers at the event included:

Mike Enoch, who hosts a podcast called “The Daily Shoah.” And Augustus Invictus, an alt-right figure who once said, “I have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War I would begin it myself.” And Christopher Cantwell, who calls himself a “fascist,” along with Johnny Monoxide, who just labels himself “fashy.” And Michael Hill, an ex-professor who said, in 2015, “Never underestimate the perfidy of the organized Jew.” And Matt Heimbach, who says only 27,000 Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

.. Yet, however counterproductive it might seem, Trump’s full-throttle defense of the rally fits in with his larger approach to politics, which is all about keeping his die-hard followers happy. This tactic might seem odd for a president, who is expected to unite the country at times of crisis, but it makes sense when you consider that Trump is a product of the world of entertainment—reality shows and wrestling matches in particular—where satisfying devoted fans is a business imperative.

.. Trump has carved out for himself a uniquely agonistic and tribalistic persona. He’s polarizing, and proud of it.

.. To win the presidency, you first need to win the support of a major political party, which means having a partisan identity. But once in power, the commander in chief is supposed to preside over the whole nation, not just those who voted for him.

.. But Trump has decided to forgo any attempt at conciliation. Instead, he’s run a bluntly partisan presidency, where his rhetoric is geared toward pleasing fanatical Fox News viewers more than creating a broad coalition. It’s a peculiarity of Trump’s behavior that he talks openly about his base, not even pretending to be the president of all Americans.

..  “The ugly truth is that white nationalists, the KKK, neo-Nazis and other bigots are indeed part of the Trump base,” columnist Brent Budowsky argued at The Hill. “Trump should throw these bigots out of his base. He should say he does not want their support. He should name names and name hate groups, loudly and repeatedly, and say he does not want their votes, their support, their praise and that he believes they are a stain on America.”

.. Rather than heeding such advice, Trump is moving in the opposite direction—and paying a political price for it.

..  As the president is increasingly criticized from outside his base, he’ll increasingly use his passionate fans as a political shield. And as Charlottesville proves, if those fans end up killing someone, the president will defend them. Caught in the closed loop of fan-servicing, Trump is setting the nation on a path toward further radicalization and further violence.