Stop Trump express before it’s too late

The last chance for primary voters to come to their senses may be the Super Tuesday elections.

How many more red flags must he wave before Republican primary voters draw the obvious conclusion that reality TV personality and real estate mogul Donald Trump is not fit to be considered seriously for the office of president of the United States?

The last chance for primary voters to come to their senses may be the Super Tuesday elections in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia. If Trump’s opponents cannot at least slow down his progress toward the nomination, he may have too many delegates and too much momentum to stop.

With Trump having alienated Latino and black voters and alarmed moderates, many pundits expect Republicans to face a drubbing in the general election if he is the nominee. Or maybe not. While Democrats might see a Trump candidacy as an easy path to the presidency for their likely candidate, Hillary Clinton, having Trump that close to the White House is a prospect that makes us cringe. If the economy slips into recession, if Clinton faces indictment or a broader scandal for her inexcusable use of a private email server while serving as Secretary of State, voter anger could reach a boil that propels the bombastic Trump to the presidency.

And what kind of president would the United States get? That takes us back to those red flags.

On policy, who knows? Promising to build a Berlin-style wall, only bigger, along the border with Mexico and make that country pay for it (it won’t) — and vowing to forcibly remove 11 million undocumented immigrants from the country — is about as specific as The Donald has gotten.

In attacking Obamacare, Trump has alternatively said he will maintain and repeal the mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance. He assures all will have access to health care, but does not say how. Otherwise, his platform amounts to eliminating the “lines around the states” inhibiting competition among insurers.

Trump promises big tax cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center’s 10-year estimate is that a Trump tax plan will mean the loss of $11.2 trillion in revenue. That would require a 21 percent cut in federal spending, but Trump offers no specifics.

On foreign policy, Trump is all over the place. At times he is the tough guy ready to aggressively use the nation’s military might. At other times the isolationist who wants to close foreign bases and keep the country out of international entanglements.

Like the rhetoric in Trump’s speeches, his policy ideas are half-baked, often less so. There is no ideological thread tying any of it together.

Oh, but he will make America great again.

What the public knows about Trump is more alarming than what it does not. He is impulsive, stokes anger to achieve his ends, and is fully confident in any decision he reaches, dismissing those who question him as losers.

This week he re-tweeted a well-known quote from the World War II-era Italian fascist leader, Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” “Good quote,” he said. “It’s OK to know it’s Mussolini. Yeah, look Mussolini was Mussolini. It’s a very good quote. It’s a very interesting quote,” Trump said on Meet the Press.

Mussolini would have liked Trump’s approach to a critical press.

“I’m gonna open up our libel laws, so when they write purposely negative and horrible, false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money,” Trump said at a rally in Fort Worth, Texas.

When pressed on CNN about the backing he has received from the well-known white supremacist David Duke, Trump, rather than repudiate the support, feigned ignorance.

“Just so you understand; I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK? I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists,” Trump said. He later blamed the response on confusion caused by a bad earpiece.

The problem, perhaps, is that when you have sowed hate and division to grow a campaign, it can become confusing about where to draw lines. Recall Trump generalized Mexicans crossing the border as rapists and drug peddlers. He gleefully repeated an apocryphal story of American soldiers executing Muslim rebels with bullets dipped in pigs’ blood. He has called for banning Muslims from entering the country. He says waterboarding does not go far enough when it comes to extracting information from prisoners.

Trump is dangerous. He should be stopped. Republicans still have the opportunity to do that. The opportunity is quickly slipping away.