I have a bone to pick with Robert Reich. He put together a great video, Eight Reasons Why Republicans Must Dump Trump. He’s completely right about everything that is wrong with Donald Trump. And these are indeed eight reasons why normal human beings should not even consider voting for Donald Trump. But they aren’t reasons why the Republican Party should dump Trump. If anything, they are eight reasons why almost none of them would ever even consider dumping him.
Let’s go through the list, because it’s telling:
- He divides us by race and ethnicity and religion;
- His incendiary lies are inciting violence across this land, but he excuses them;
- He bullies, humiliates, and threatens those who dare cross him;
- He spreads baseless conspiracy theories;
- His hateful and demeaning attitudes toward women and boastful claims of sexual dominance have been filling the airwaves for years;
- He believes climate change is not caused by humans, contrary to all scientific proof;
- He proposes using torture against terrorists, and punishing their families, both in clear violation of international law;
- He wants to cut taxes on the rich, giving the wealthiest one tenth of one percent an average tax cut of more than $1.3 million each every year.
There are only two reasons there that are not complete Republican orthodoxy. Number 3 is still largely true of the Republican Party, but party actors aren’t in general so obvious about it. But listen to Michael Savage some time and you will see that this is still at the core of Republican thought. Number 5 is quite true of the Republican Party, but the way that Robert Reich has presented it, it is too specific to Trump. Reich could have just as easily written, “Trump treats women in a demeaning way and tries to control their lives.” Then that too would be Republican orthodoxy.
Robert Reich Wants to Believe
I know what’s going on. Robert Reich still holds out hope that the “reasonable” Republicans will step up and take over the party. But that just isn’t going to happen. Look at what happened to the segregationist Democrats in the 1960s, they ran screaming for the Republican Party. But as the Republican Party has gotten more and more insane, we haven’t seen a huge exodus of Republicans to the Democratic Party. Instead, we’ve just seen more and more extreme claims from the Republicans.
This is why we heard throughout the 1990s that President Clinton wasn’t just a liberal but a “socialist” and even a “communist.” So there’s always a reason why the Republicans don’t change parties. And the real reason is that the Republican Party is still controlled by those bigots who left the Democratic Party because they didn’t think blacks ought to have the right to vote.
What I’m saying is not new. I’ve said it many times before and so have lots of other people. But as time goes on, people lose grasp of the truth. And that truth is that Donald Trump is not an outlier in the Republican Party. Sure, he has his own style. But what he stands for is what the party stands for. Just because Paul Ryan seems more reasonable than Trump doesn’t mean that he is. The truth is that they are very much the same and if they were in power together, they would get along just great.
And Robert Reich understands this. The only reason that Republicans have for dumping Trump is that he is almost certain to lose. Otherwise, there is nothing substantive that the Republicans can complain about when it comes to Donald Trump.