The GOP died this weekend - By Jennifer Rubin
By Jennifer Rubin September 19 at 10:15 AM
Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. Follow @JRubinBlogger
Those Republicans mortified by the presidential nomination of Donald Trump have been pondering a series of questions over the past few months:
Have Republicans put party above country in backing Trump?
Can the GOP survive Trump?
Should the center-right let bygones be bygones after the election?
The answers have become clear over the past few days. Trump’s campaign put out an egregiously false statement on Thursday claiming Trump “ended” the birther controversy in 2011 and blaming Hillary Clinton for starting the racist smear. Trump, without explanation or apology, on Friday announced the president was in fact born in the United States. A series of surrogates, including Kellyanne Conway, Gov. Chris Christie and vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, fanned out on Sunday to double down on the lies, reiterating this was all Clinton’s fault and insisting, despite Trump’s multiple utterances since 2011, that he had not fanned the racist fires and built his political image on birtherism.
It is noteworthy that NBC’s Chuck Todd, CBS’s John Dickerson, CNN’s Jake Tapper and ABC’s Martha Raddatz all grilled — and in some cases decimated — the Trump surrogates, demonstrating that responsible journalists do not abandon the topic when Trumpkins try to deflect but press and press again for answers. They remind us this must be front and center at the debates, and moderators should not move on until Trump answers their queries. Here was just one such exchange:
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/09/19/the-gop-died-this-weekend/?tid=pm_opinions_pop_b&utm_term=.ab447e169429
