GOP: STAND WITH CORKER AGAINST TRUMP
Donald Trump might as well have set fire to the White House.
And drizzled gasoline to the Capitol. Especially into the dome’s Republican corners.
News lines were smoking Tuesday with the war of words between retiring Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Trump.
To summarize, in the words of Vox’s Ezra Klein, “Corker thinks Trump is a clear and present danger to the country and the world, and Trump believes Corker is short and wouldn’t have won re-election in Tennessee.”
That’s actually an oversimplification.
Corker said Trump is “debasing” the country and struggles with the truth. He said Trump is “absolutely not” a role model for the children in America. He suggested that he soon will convene hearings to examine the ways Trump “purposely has been breaking down relationships around the world.” And those slams come on the heels of Corker saying recently that Trump has turned the White House into “an adult day care.”
Trump called Corker an “incompetent” head of the Foreign Relations Committee and said Corker couldn’t be elected dog catcher in Tennessee. (Dog catchers aren’t elected in the Volunteer State and Corker already has been elected to office here three times — once as Chattanooga mayor and twice as Tennessee senator. Now some are increasingly wondering if he might be the antidote to Trump in the next presidential primary.)
But the oversimplification of Corker’s remarks is not without repercussions. Nor should they be.
Gradually, glacially, other Republicans are listening and also speaking out. How can they not?
Arizona Sen. John McCain, re-elected last year and now battling brain cancer, increasingly takes Trump on.
Former President George W. Bush, while never naming Trump, lamented in a rare and recent speech, “We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism.”
Arizona’s Republican Sen. Jeff Flake on Tuesday announced he, like Corker, will not seek re-election. He unleashed a scalding 17-minute attack on Trump, saying he “will no longer be complicit or silent” in the face of the president’s “reckless, outrageous and undignified” behavior.
Flake, who has spoken out before, has said he always knew that crossing the president would be dangerous politically. He addressed it again on the Senate floor Tuesday: “We’re not here to simply mark time. … There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.”
Vox’s D.C.-plugged-in Klein, writing about Corker’s sudden frankness, notes that Corker’s colleagues “overwhelmingly agree.” But there are tax cuts to pass.
“On the other hand, their [the silent GOP] entire strategy has been to take their doubts about Trump’s leadership and character and lock them away in the deepest, darkest part of their psyches, to be exhumed once Obamacare is repealed, tax reform is passed and the legacy-resuscitating memoir is ready to be written.”
Earth to the GOP: Good luck with that. Listen to Corker and Flake and McCain. Follow their lead while there is still time. That is the only way to save not just our country, but your own party’s backside, as well.
“Believe” us (as Trump would say), we Democrats are not excited to help the GOP. But we know the country needs all of us to fix the destruction already wrought and sure to be worsened by this president and his continued administration.
So where are you, Republican colleagues of Corker and Flake and McCain?
Lamar Alexander is deafeningly quiet. Ditto Rep. Chuck “tirelessly working” Fleischmann, who represents Tennessee’s 3rd District.
We’ll cut Alexander just a bit of slack: He may be keeping his head down in an effort to keep alive his bid with 23 other senators to “fix” Obamacare with a bipartisan deal reportedly aimed at stabilizing the Affordable Care Act’s markets in the face of Trump’s efforts to sabotage the insurance coverage of 20-plus million Americans.
But where is everybody else? Where is Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C.? Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine? Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska? Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.? All of them have come out against Trump policies either on health care or fiscal matters, but frankly there is much more at stake here.
Do you see Trump’s effect on our discourse? Do you see his disinterest in looking for ways to stop foreign — specifically Russian — meddling in our elections and in our social fabric with their continuing social media attacks? Do you see him dividing the races at Charlottesville and again when four Green Berets die in an attack in Niger? Do you see him complaining about terrorism in that attack? Do you see him uniting this country in any fashion whatsoever?
Do you have no sense of national duty?
If not, you may deserve this president and what he is raining on your legacies — the mortgage of your souls for nothing save what Corker rightly called the “debasing” of our country.
It won’t just be Trump’s legacy. It will be yours, too. And, alas, the country’s.