Because the 2016 presidential election has the potential to be a watershed election for America, I will continue to sound the alarm until a new United States president has been elected. Accordingly, I am compelled to repeat the Republican Party’s previous harsh comments, before they flip-flopped, about their now presumptive nominee again.
But before I do that, I would quickly add ‘caveat emptor’ (let the buyer beware); because those should be the watchwords for those voters and Republican politicians who are buying what Donald Trump is selling because the way that he is running his campaign certainly does not leave any room for the United States motto, ‘e pluribus unum’ (out of many, one).
Early on in the Republican primary race to become the Republican nominee for president, Republican elites and numerous Republican members of congress called Donald Trump a con artist, charlatan, clown, joke, and many other names that I cannot recall right now, before they said that he was unfit to be president of the United States of America. However, after all of their efforts to thwart his rise to Republican standard bearer failed, they are now coyly saying, oops, never mind.
They are now comparing him to Secretary Hillary Clinton and some are even saying that he is more qualified than she is to run the country. They have suddenly abandoned all of their principles and love of country, done an about-face and are now saying that he is a genuine person who is definitely fit to run America. Even Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee has fallen in line and is now behind him. Politics and Trumpism certainly do make strange bedfellows.
Even if you never understood the down-and-dirty of politics – and never really seriously questioned it because you thought that you at least understood the meaning of the word statesman and therefore knew that when all else failed statesmanship would prevail, this thing with The Donald should make you think again. If you didn’t question politics and what it is that actually motivates politicians before, maybe now would be a good time to start.
The decisions that many Republican politicians are making now to support Donald Trump will leave a scar on them. It will be a scar that will last long beyond the time that they leave office and likely long after they have departed this earth. It will be a permanent scar and history will gaze upon it as it judges them. This election will be talked about down through the intriguing annals of history and hopefully will be an aberration rather than the norm.
Republican politicians can deal with their animus toward Secretary Clinton without risking putting America in the hands of Donald Trump; a man who is a narcissist who is egocentric and totally unpredictable. They do not have to vote for Secretary Clinton. And if they are true statesmen they should feel bound by principle and whatever they do, they will not vote for or encourage their constituents to vote for Mr. Trump. If they do not have the courage to do anything else, they can simply remain silent.
Right now America is fragile and struggling with an identity problem; we are trying to determine who we are as a country. There are many different factions that are afraid and angry. In particular, there is a faction that has long been the ‘majority’ that, regardless of how they vote in this election, will soon become a ‘minority’. I can only imagine how frightening that must be.
And each of these factions reserves the right to be angry. The key is to control that anger and not let it control us. Then we should channel it into rediscovering our identity as a country and move forward from there to make America even better than it has ever been before. But in order to do this, we need a leader who will bring us together not one who will reinforce our perceived differences and assure that we remain in separate factions in order to fully exploit our dark side for their personal political gain. Whoever that leader might be, it is not Donald Trump!
In his article in the Washington Post entitled ‘I ate my words about Trump. But treating him as normal is a recipe for ruin’ Dana Milbank said “Now Trump is attempting to normalize himself, assuming voters have short memories. A large number of Republicans are cravenly choosing party unity above decency… Trump didn’t win the nomination because most Americans, or even most Republicans, support him. I had to eat my words because feckless Republican leaders were too splintered to provide voters a viable alternative.”
You should neither buy in to The Donald’s assumption that you have a short memory nor should you abandon your principles and follow the craven example set by flip-flopping Republican politicians to unify the party at all costs. Now – in addition to these flip-flopping politicians, billionaires like Sheldon Adelson are lining up to support him and contribute millions of dollars to his campaign in hopes that he will do their bidding as long as they can convince him that the spigot will be there and they will open it for him whenever the need arises.
But Mr. Trump has a problem because his whole primary campaign was based on the premise that it was self-financed, meaning that he could not be bought; he said as much himself. He also said that when people give politicians money they expect something for it. This situation involving those billionaires who are lining up to finance his campaign is a real catch 22 for him. Then again, maybe it is not: this is The Donald that we are talking about.
Regardless of my political persuasions, when you go to the polls during the general election, I will not presume to tell you who you should vote for; but I will presume to tell you who you should not vote for. No matter how much money that billionaires shower him with, under no circumstances should you vote for someone who, if nothing else, has proven that he is completely unpredictable and does not possess the gravitas to be the president of the United States of America. You should not vote for someone who has made a mockery of the American political process and shamed America in the eyes of the world. You should not vote for someone who can say hello to you one day and the next day tell you that it was not him that said hello to you but, instead, it was someone impersonating him (e.g. the John Barron and the John Miller fiasco). And you should not vote for someone who, even before the official primaries season has officially ended and months before the successful nominee is sworn into office, already has many world leaders bewildered and feeling anxious due to his behavior. You should not vote for Donald Trump!
Eulus Dennis – author, Operation Rubik’s Cube and Living Between The Line