The GOP's Super Doomsday
By this time tomorrow, the slumped figures of the walking dead may well clutter the Republican landscape. If so, the cause of death will look a lot like assisted suicide.
The GOP's Kevorkian is, of course, Donald Trump. This is not because he is a political colossus. Far from it, Trump is the luckiest candidate alive, not least because his opponents, and the party, have worked overtime to create him.
He could not have done this on his own. Time and again, he has played the bumptious idiot -- trashing women, ridiculing a disabled reporter, whining about mistreatment, making misstatement after misstatement and, in South Carolina, turning in the worst debate performance in memory. He has excoriated John McCain and George W. Bush and, God help us, rebuked the Pope. He lives from insult to insult, each more juvenile than the last.
support from the vile racist David Duke and the KKK, claiming ignorance of what they stand for. He retweeted a quote from Benito Mussolini. He suggested disqualifying the Hispanic judge presiding over a suit against his bogus "Trump University" -- apparently for being Hispanic. Instead of claiming the higher ground of a front runner, he brayed fresh venom at his reeling opposition, lowering the depths of a campaign that is ever more degrading to his party and his country.
In eight months since entering the race, he has learned nothing. His platform, such as it is, packages the ludicrous with the politically blasphemous, scorning both reality and GOP orthodoxy. His promise to "make America great again" shreds the inclusiveness that is the essence of our greatness. His proposals to ban all Muslims, wall off Mexico and deport 11 million illegal immigrants combine the unconstitutional and unachievable with appeals to racial and religious animosity. His willful ignorance of governance and policy is the frightening foretaste of a floundering presidency dangerously lacking in direction or even dignity -- a reality driven home in Thursday's debate. By now he should have been political roadkill, a long-dead skunk in the GOP's rear view mirror.
Instead, he is the party's all too likely nominee. So how did this happen?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-north-patterson/the-gops-super-doomsday_b_9306830.html