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Daniel R. Cobb: Republicans, embrace your inner child
Yes, Republicans, embrace your inner child: Donald. Mr. Trump speaks your inner truth, however Hitleresque and vile it sounds. Speaker of the House Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Reince Priebus and many other Republicans are in near-panic over who their cuckoo’s nest base has crowned as the Republican nominee, but not because they disagree with Trump’s hatred of immigrants, women, African Americans, Latinos, Muslims the gay community, etc., etc. No, Trump’s attitudes perfectly reflect the decades of tireless Republican sabotaging of Democratic efforts to enable the poor, students, women, minorities and the great middleclass to advance themselves and keep from falling ever farther behind. Trump’s values mirror the Republican Party’s obsession of spoon-feeding the rich with more tax breaks, loopholes, pervasive deregulation, weakened labor laws, etc., etc. However, the problem Republicans are having with Trump is that he spews these “values” way too loudly. He draws too much attention to the hate in their hate machine. Every Republican politician knows they’re supposed to bloviate about patriotism and the Bible, so called “clean coal”, the great climate conspiracy, the magic of trickle-down economics, and the righteousness of endless war. As much as possible for a band of rich and entitled white bigots, all that revulsion for people not like them is supposed to be kept on the down low, visible only in legislation that Americans never read and those lobbyist-drafted riders snuck into bills at 1:00 am.
Trump is like the child in Sunday church who happily shouts the same profanity his parents used the night before, and then shrieks in joy at the response. It’s not fair to blame the child, he doesn’t know what he’s saying, but Trump certainly does. Trump and his political success to date is a creation of the Republican Party. That party, with its propaganda network of Fox News, iHeart Radio, et al, has embraced every hate group, white supremacists, gun fanatics, misogynists, the militia movement, separatists, etc., and this collection of haters is their base, with Trump as their king. Thankfully, they don’t represent the majority of thinking Americas, not by a long shot.
Trump reveals to the world what the Republican political machine is truly all about. Against Ryan’s repeated pleas, he has opened the party’s kimono wide and the nation and America’s closest allies are suffering profound revulsion. Republican politicians long ago abandoned the majority of Americans in favor of national and international corporations and the wealthiest 1%, but to stay in power, they happily allied themselves with extremists who blindly vote against their own interests because they cannot resist the hatred the party spews. To those moderate Independents and Republicans who are finally discovering the truth, we on the left welcome you. Come to the light.
To Ryan, McConnell, Priebus, and other Republican leaders, you have a serious quandary on your hands, don’t you? Do you embrace and support your child, Trump, perhaps the most unqualified and malevolent candidate in history, all in an effort to defeat Hillary? You probably won’t succeed, and in doing so, you also risk losing both the House and the Senate. Or do you turn your back on Trump and infuriate your precious “base”, the very people who nominated him? You made this bed, and you surely deserve to sleep in it. Meanwhile, your child Trump will keep being Trump.
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Copyright 2016 Daniel R. Cobb
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