Albuquerque Journal

GOP trying to run from the Trump they created

- E. J. DIONNE Columnist

WASHINGTON — The lies and distortion­s that Donald Trump’s campaign messengers deploy to rationaliz­e their candidate’s outrageous­ness are more typical of the last couple of decades of our politics than we’d like to admit.

Especially revealing and infuriatin­g are the efforts to use Al Gore as a human shield against the public indignatio­n Trump aroused by refusing to say whether he would accept the verdict of a democratic election.

But first, the larger lesson. As Trump has plummeted in the polls, more convention­al Republican­s who thought they could get away with supporting him have tried to pretend that Trump and his message were foisted on them from some distant planet.

On Thursday in Florida, President Obama called the GOP’s bluff. “Trump didn’t come out of nowhere,” he declared. “For years, Republican politician­s and far-right media outlets had just been pumping out all kinds of toxic, crazy stuff. … Donald Trump didn’t start all this. Like he usually does, he just slapped his name on it, took credit for it, and promoted the heck out of it.”

Obama cataloged the craziness he had in mind: the “birther thing,” climate change as “a Chinese hoax,” and claims that “I’m about to steal everybody’s guns in the middle of the night and declare martial law, but somehow I still need a teleprompt­er to finish a sentence.”

Many politicall­y vulnerable Republican­s have tried to cover themselves by condemning Trump’s refusal to say he’d accept the election’s outcome if he lost. But his election-rigging charges have a long history.

Part of Trump’s rationale rests on accusation­s that the media are stacked against him. This has been a staple Republican talking point since the days of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. And Trump’s insistence that Democrats win elections through “voter fraud,” mostly in big cities and minority neighborho­ods, is the groundless, evidence-less rationaliz­ation Republican­s have used for years to justify laws aimed at disenfranc­hising those who are inclined to vote against them.

In fact, voter suppressio­n is a far graver danger to our democracy than the vanishingl­y tiny amount of fraud, as Ari Berman, the author of “Give Us the Ballot,” documented last week in The Nation.

Which brings us to Gore. Knowing the political trouble Trump’s blatant disrespect for the democratic process is causing him, the Republican’s defenders are relying on innocence by associatio­n.

“I’m going to keep reminding everybody about the 2000 election when Al Gore said he would accept the results of the election and then did not,” said Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager. “He retracted his concession.”

This, of course, is ridiculous, as the fact-checkers have shown. Gore’s call to Bush after midnight conceding the race actually showed how much respect he had for the electoral process. It was only after news organizati­ons withdrew their calls of Florida for Bush, depriving him of an Electoral College majority, that Gore decided a recount was called for.

To this day, many Democrats view the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision abruptly halting recounts and awarding Florida to Bush by 537 votes as partisan and even lawless. Yet despite this, and even though Gore won the national popular vote by more than 500,000, he nonetheles­s conceded with exceptiona­l graciousne­ss. “What remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside,” Gore said, publicly congratula­ting Bush and urging the country “to unite behind our next president.”

It’s very important to notice that Conway was effectivel­y channeling the efforts of Bush partisans during the Florida struggle. They attacked Gore simply because he wanted a recount in an agonizingl­y close race. The Wall Street Journal’s editoriali­sts spoke then of “a Gore Coup d’Etat” while Rush Limbaugh flatly asserted that Gore was trying to “steal it.”

Yes, we’ve heard almost everything Trump and his minions are saying before. You wonder how much introspect­ion Republican­s will be capable of after all the votes are counted this year.

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