“The reason many are not shocked about [Trump’s abuse of power] is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration.” - Mark Galli, editor in chief of Christianity Today
Abraham Lincoln, the first President of the newly-formed Republican Party, once opined that “If a man will stand up and assert, and repeat and reassert, that two and two do not make four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.”
Through out the House Impeachment hearings - and I’m sure the same will be echoed in the Senate trial - Republicans have claimed that Democrats have always wanted to impeach Donald Trump because they don’t like him or his policies. It’s a thinly supported narrative they keep repeating about a dissenting minority not unlike a similar number within their own ranks who sought to impeach Obama shortly after he was inaugurated.
A serious look however at events gives strong credence to another claim - that impeachment for the president was inevitable once the GOP failed to muster the backbone to prevent the nomination going to a charlatan like Trump who appealed to there baser instincts rather than there better angels.
Republicans are now officially the character-doesn’t-count party, the personal-responsibility-just-proves-you-have-failed-to-blame-the-other-guy party, the deficit-doesn’t-matter party, the Russia-is-our-ally party, and the I’m-right-and-you-are-human-scum party. Yes, it’s President Trump’s party now, but it stands only for what he has just tweeted. - Stuart Stevens, GOP political consultant
Republican leaders knew full well that the TV reality star had a past filled with unethical and failed business practices as well as his shameless personal behavior, yet failed to shine a spotlight on what a recent Christianity Today Op-ed piece called his “grossly immoral character”.
Trump’s history of corrupt behavior during his days as a brash, young Manhattan real estate magnate had flagged him as a potential person of interests subject to investigations into wrong doing. This history followed him into his presidential campaign as he became linked with a Russian effort to influence the 2016 elections.
The social media echo chambers that beget most political opinions in this country glided over the debased character of a man who would use his “brand” to rob hopeful people of a higher education through his Trump University scam and use donated funds to Trump’s charity “to advance the interests of the Trump campaign.”
Through out most of Trump’s adult life he has religiously followed the advice of his now deceased mentor Roy Cohn, a man considered as “pure evil” by some contemporaries. Cohn’s modus operandi, as has become Trump’s, is to deny everything and “to scare potential adversaries with hollow threats and spurious lawsuits.”
The degree by which these tactics became fantastically absurd and humanely demeaning was only limited by how willing others were to propagate them. This limitation was overcome with great success by the media attention he got, who it seemed couldn’t get enough of Trump’s theatrics, and by the enabling crowds at his numerous rallies who cheered and applauded his comments that leaped beyond the ethical lines of decency. The prevailing attitude that evolved was that “we don’t care what he does or says, just as long as he accomplishes what we feel will make America great again”.
It’s a lowering of the bar that disregards the future implications for our way of life and our republican form of government. It is naive to believe that you can elect the class clown who bullies everyone then pretend he has left all off that behind.
The once great Party of Lincoln has completely lost its soul and can never again point a credible finger at any wrong doing of their political rivals. There no longer exists a viable two-party system. A avoid has been created for thoughtful conservatives of the Eisenhower and John McCain mold that will likely remain in the foreseeable future.
And through all of this, Russia and China sit back and watch with the hope that their dreams of a weakened America will soon put them in the driver’s seat that controls world events.
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