GOP exposed

The Republican Party is in the middle of an existential crisis, and the future is uncertain.

A couple of months ago an artists’ collective that calls itself INDECLINE unveiled life-sized statues of Donald Trump in the nude in public spaces in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Seattle. The grossly unflattering figures got their five minutes or so of fame before authorities hauled them away.

Now, with less than a month to go before Election Day, Republican officeholders, media pundits and party officials have joined millions of other Americans in at last acknowledging the obvious: that the self-procaimed would-be emperor — “I alone can fix it” — wears no clothes. Except for his ubiquituous red gimme cap, Donald Trump is parading naked through the public square, his retinue still following and still proclaiming his greatness.

As the besieged “emperor,” threatens to lay waste to the Republican Party and, in our view, to the nation itself, it’s disturbing to hear Texan accents among the dwindling band of devotees. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul and Land Commissioner George P. Bush, among others, have made the cold political calculation that they have to remain wedded to Trump, despite loathsome comments that reveal him to be a sexual predator, despite a growing Greek chorus of women coming forward with evidence of his predations. It’s party over principle, raw politics over patriotism.

At least, the state’s senior senator has a rationale. He told the Austin American-Statesman last week — presumably with a straight face — that all presidents learn on the job, and Trump would too. Cornyn’s reasoning isn’t as laughable as that offered by U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert. “I think we should forgive Trump because he made those comments when he was a Democrat,” the Tyler Republican told radio host Sean Hannity.

Not all Texas Repblicans are kowtowing. U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of San Antonio, locked in a dead-even race with former U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, has said he cannot support a man “who degrades women, insults minorities and has no clear path to keep our country safe.” U.S. Rep. Kay Granger of Fort Worth has rejected Trump, as well. The Trump-inspired angst is a national phenomenon. U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, one of the first targets of Trump’s insults, still endorses the nominee. So does Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Even if the GOP standard-bearer pulls off the upset of all upsets, his poisonous candidacy must be the catalyst for profound soul-searching among Republicans. How did it happen that the grand old party picked a candidate for the presidency who is, in the words of Robert Kagan, a Republican national security expert, “the most dangerous threat to American democracy since the Civil War”? How did it happen that the party acceded to a candidate who dismisses talk of sexual assault as locker-room banter; who insults women, minorities, the disabled and the military; and whose authoritarian inclinations invite comparisons to Mussolini, Chavez and, above all, to his bosom buddy, Vladimir Putin?

Answers to such questions are complex and tentative at this point, and yet one response seems glaringly obvious: A political party that shows contempt and sneering disdain toward the process of governance itself eventually spirals downward into political absurdity. Donald Trump, or someone like him, is the appalling result.

Wouldn’t it be nice — to borrow Trump’s stock phrase when the subject of Putin’s Russia comes up — if the GOP-dominated Texas Legislature could show its fellow Republicans how to reform the party? Instead of gumming up the works of government over narrow-minded ideological crusades — transgender bathrooms, so-called religious freedom laws — wouldn’t it be nice if they resolved to focus with Democratic colleagues on issues that truly matter to the vast majority of Texans? For the good of the party, and the nation, Republicans post-Trump must summon the political courage to begin the hard task of reform and renewal. As a reminder of that hard reality, maybe Donald Trump (clothed) deserves a statue, after all.