GOP sold its soul long before Trump nominated Kavanaugh
The July 10 editorial rightly excoriates the Republican Party for selling its soul to enable the Trump presidency and its toxic consequences of now packing the Supreme Court with reactionary justices for the next 30-odd years. But it omits much applicable history.
The GOP abandonment of principle began long before Trump, with its embrace of presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s trenchant ’64 declaration that “extremism in the cause of liberty (narrowly defined) is no vice.” Richard Nixon piled on in ’72 with his “Southern Strategy,” embracing the segregationist Dixiecrats as new Republicans. They voluntarily sank deeper in that racist mire with Lee Atwater’s Willie Horton campaign ad for George H.W. Bush in the ’88 presidential campaign, and by displaying abject silence when Klansman David Duke ran for the Senate as a Republican from Louisiana in 2016.
As part of this divisive strategy, the Federalist Society for years has filled the Supreme Court nominee pipeline with extreme rightwing candidates, including Brett Kavanaugh. And who can forget Mitch McConnell quashing consideration of President Obama’s moderate nominee, Merrick Garland?
So any selling of souls began at least 54 years ago. Trump is merely capitalizing on it. The Supreme Court is no longer a bulwark against excesses by the legislative and executive branches. Unless Justice Roberts summons the mettle to rule as a moderate, the Court is now a co-conspirator flouting the original arrangement of a triad of equal powers balancing out one another.
With the influence on elections of unlimited big money, approved by the Court, the game is rigged. Our democracy is now a corporate state or an oligarchy, or a hybrid of both. To quote
Pogo, “We have met the enemy and it is us.”
Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park
Trump’s two missions
Donald Trump entered the presidency with two primary missions: 1. Promote himself endlessly. 2. Destroy or disparage anything Barack Obama accomplished in office and smear the former president with conspiracy theories.
For the benefit of his hard-core loyalists, Trump has succeeded in both missions by employing his two primary talents — bragging and lying.
Ed Stone, Northbrook