The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Agonizing over future of Grand Old Party
As a result of the just-concluded Republican National Convention, the Grand Old Party that this writer has supported for 50 years has disappeared, having morphed into a new Trumpublican Party, founded on a curious amalgam of the erratic, nativist, isolationist, protectionist and authoritarian views of Donald Trump and the most conservative (and discriminatory) religious-based views of the far right of the Republican Party.
The platform adopted by this new party includes support for the Great Wall of Trump and several other Trump proposals, including diminishing the party’s longstanding support of free trade and endorsing steps toward a more isolationist foreign policy. All of these platform planks are intended to somehow make America great again.
As if the Trump proposals were not bad enough, the platform also includes numerous provisions designed to spread Christian values throughout our secular society, including rolling back the progress made toward legal equality by the LGBT community. At a time when our nation has monumental economic, social, and security challenges, it is befuddling that a national political party would focus such intense scrutiny on the issues of wedding cakes and bathroom preference. It is doubtful that any members of the LGBT community would look upon this section of the platform as a roadmap for making America great again.
There is no escaping the fact that the GOP has a depressingly backward-looking platform and no qualified presidential candidate. As a result, many longtime Republican voters, including this one, will be forced to cast their votes for another party’s nominee, including, possibly, Hillary Clinton.
Most Republicans believe that electing anyone, even Donald Trump, is preferable to electing “Crooked” Hillary Clinton. However, while it is true that Mrs. Clinton wins no awards for truthfulness or for unassailable judgment, she is by far the better choice in terms of the two factors of greatest importance in this or any election: character and mental stability.
Throughout the past year, Trump has demonstrated over and over that, as Ted Cruz noted during one of the debates, “Donald has a tenuous relationship with the truth.” Actually, Trump has demonstrated that he has no relationship with the truth. In fact, it seems that the concepts of truth and lies have no meaning whatsoever to him. In Trump’s mind, whatever he says is de facto the truth and should be accepted as such. A notorious example was his claim that a recording of him on a phone call claiming to be his own public relations person was not he, although the voice was clearly his and had been verified as such by voice analysis experts. In Trump’s mind, his saying it wasn’t his voice meant that it wasn’t his voice.
Likewise, Trump has no moral compass. His rude and crude attacks on his GOP opponents, the media, and anyone else who disagrees with him are disgusting, and yet, they pale in comparison to his history of corrupt business practices such as his phony Trump University and the use of numerous bankruptcies to enrich himself at the expense of others. The only apparent determinant of right and wrong in Trump’s world is whether something benefits him. What benefits the Donald is right; what harms him is wrong.
Donald Trump is not only a truly unsavory individual, but he also shows signs of being mentally unstable. His all-consuming ego causes extremely erratic and narcissistic behavior. Two very public examples were his bizarre attacks on the “Mexican” judge hearing one of his Trump University cases and his self-aggrandizing, 30-minute rambling introduction of his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence. Neither of these can be considered the actions of a rational person and certainly not of one who aspires to be president of the United States.
For this longtime Republican, the GOP is gone, at least temporarily. It has been replaced by a strange new Trumpublican Party that proposes to make America great again through policies that will divide Americans from each other and alienate America from other cultures and nations. Only a Trump loss in November will help prevent further destruction of the Republican Party, and it will take much more than his defeat to rebuild a forward-looking GOP that can help America and Americans adapt to globalization and all of its challenges.