Conservatives Reap What They've Sown
Let me begin by clearly stating a fact, I do not support the presidential candidacy of Donald J. Trump. Having stated that, I find the hypocrtical behavior of the Republican Establishment stunning. This is the party that gained control of the Senate and the House by promising its base that it would deliver on wild promises like repealing the Affordable Care Act and other promises it knew it could not deliver. Those broken promises and the perceived failure of the GOP controlled Congress to stop President Obama from implementing his Progressive agenda gave rise to the very movement that is helping to rocket a New York billionaire and former liberal to be the GOP standard bearer in November.
Still there is something more hypocrtical and stunning about the GOP's reaction to Trump being their nominee. For at least 7 years, the GOP Establishment has stood by in silence while party members, elected and non-elected, have engaged in vicious and dangerous rhetoric. One does not have to reflect very long to recall a GOP member saying something to alienate women, immigrants, people of color, gays and the poor. One would have hoped that the example set by GOP presidential candidate, Senator John McCain would have set the tone. Near the end of the 2008 campaign, when confronted by a woman stating that then candidate Senator Barack Obama was a Muslim, McCain, showing integrity one would have expected from the standard bearer of a major political party, stated that" Senator Obama is a good man, we just have differences about how to run the country." Unfortunately McCain's statesmanship was followed up 4 years later by Mitt Romney's 47% speech. Perhaps Romney set the tone. While political discourse is acceptable and necessary, telling women to place an aspirin between their legs to prevent pregnancy after rape is beyond the pale of decency and sensitivity. While immigration is an issue that needs to be addressed, saying that children fleeing persecution South of the border have calves like pineapples from allegedly smuggling drugs into the US won't help grow the GOP. Openly bragging that voter ID laws, which are really laws in search of a problem, will ensure a GOP candidate wins your state, reveals the true intention of the laws which is to suppress the African American vote. While it's one thing for Limbaugh, Coulter or Hannity to play to their audiences with highly charged remarks, it's quite telling that all of the remarks I've referenced were made by elected GOP officials. Does anyone recall a prominent member of the Republican Establishment repudiating any of these comments, I don't. I'm sure that you all recall a South Carolina Congressman showing the ultimate level of disrespect by interrupting President Obama during the State of the Union address and yelling "you lie" at the president. Add to this the steady drumbeat of radio and TV personalities disrespecting the President and trying to render his presidency illegitimate by questioning
whether the president is an American and whether he is a Muslim as if being a Muslim disqualifies one from being President. Once again silence from the GOP Establishment. It is telling that with less than a year before his term ends, fully 43% of Republicans believe that President Obama is a Muslim. For the past 7 years Fox News and the other aforementioned Conservative mouthpieces have fed their listeners ,also known as the GOP base, a steady diet of doom and gloom. They have convinced their listeners that they have been forgotten since Obama was elected. In the minds of the base this became, not heated political rhetoric but political fact that fueled their anger to"take their country back!" The GOP Establishment series of broken promises, ongoing uncivil political discourse and the palpable anger of its base should have gotten the attention of the party leaders but why would it? After all the base was always reliable going back to Reagan. In fact some party leaders fully expected that today's conditions were similar to the Jimmy Carter years. They even compared President Obama to Carter. So of course they trotted out the same old Establishment candidates, well at least 14 of the 17. The candidates much like the Establishment were tone deaf to the needs of their base. So much like the Boston Tea Party they rebelled and rejected the party that ignored them. They wanted change. Not a party loyalist. The GOP Establishment created the conditions for someone that is not tone deaf to the anger of their base to emerge. Donald Trump a branding and marketing genius heard the dogwhistles loud and clear. A telling remark by a low income woman from South Carolina that one might think has as much in common with Trump as an exotic dancer has with a cloistered monk, says it all, "Donald J. Trump is one of us. " Game, Set Nomination!
The GOP Establishment created the conditions within its base that produced Donald Trump. It is laughable and poetic justice that they didn't see him coming and now find him unacceptable. "We want our country back" was music to the GOP's ears. They assumed that after 7 years of trying to destroy President Obama,telling anyone that would listen how terrible things are, and filling their base with rhetoric designed to get them running to the polls, they would have the White House handed to them on a silver platter. People did listen, especially their base. The GOP Establishment never thought that when their base chanted "We want our country back", they would begin to take their country back by taking back the party of Lincoln.
Michael S. Nixon
©PolitiComm2016
