The GOPs moral rot is the problem, not Donald Trump Jr.

[applegrove]

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2017/07/14/the-gops-moral-rot-is-the-problem-not-donald-trump-jr/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.61c1caa95cc0

"SNIP..........


We have always had in our political culture narcissists, ideologues and flimflammers, but it took the 21st-century GOP to put one in the White House. It took elected leaders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican National Committee (not to mention its donors and activists) to wave off Trump’s racists attacks on a federal judge, blatant lies about everything from 9/11 to his own involvement in birtherism, replete evidence of disloyalty to America (i.e. Trump’s “Russia first” policies), misogyny, Islamophobia, ongoing potential violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause (along with a mass of conflicts of interests), firing of an FBI director, and now, evidence that the campaign was willing to enlist a foreign power to defeat Clinton in the presidential election.

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”

.............SNIP"

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. As this conservative says, the party wouldnt know a patriot if

it fell out of the sky, landed on their face, and wiggled.

[bronxiteforever]

2. I agree with her point that the animal spirit of the GOP

Has made it a party that can't govern only hate. But the energy supplied to feed this spirit comes from the plutocratic donor class (which she does mention). Born in the bowels of the Koch family is the old John Birch society now given ascendency by the Supreme Court from Buckley v Valeo on down.

[lunatica]

3. We were 100% right when we said he'd never be elected.

but we never counted on Russian meddling.

Yes. I do believe Russia made a difference. I'm not going to pretend that Americans voted for this fool all on our own. Had they not meddled regarding Hillary the outcome of our elections would have probably been that she would be President now. It doesn't take a huge stretch of our imaginations to know that.

20% of our electorate has never had the power it supposedly has today. Fuck that shit. They have no more power than they ever did, and that 20% has always existed. Always.

[Nitram]

4. It's both the rot at the heart of the GOP and the corruption of the Trump family.