Trump is killing the Republican Party - By Joe Scarborough

[DonViejo]

I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left its senses. The political movement that once stood athwart history resisting bloated government and military adventurism has been reduced to an amalgam of talk-radio resentments. President Trump’s Republicans have devolved into a party without a cause, dominated by a leader hopelessly ill-informed about the basics of conservatism, U.S. history and the Constitution.

America’s first Republican president reportedly said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” The current Republican president and the party he controls were granted monopoly power over Washington in November and already find themselves spectacularly failing Abraham Lincoln’s character exam.

It would take far more than a single column to detail Trump’s failures in the months following his bleak inaugural address. But the Republican leaders who have subjugated themselves to the White House’s corrupting influence fell short of Lincoln’s standard long before their favorite reality-TV star brought his gaudy circus act to Washington.

When I left Congress in 2001, I praised my party’s successful efforts to balance the budget for the first time in a generation and keep many of the promises that led to our takeover in 1994. I concluded my last speech on the House floor by foolishly predicting that Republicans would balance budgets and champion a restrained foreign policy for as long as they held power.

I would be proved wrong immediately.

As the new century began, Republicans gained control of the federal government. George W. Bush and the GOP Congress responded by turning a $155 billion surplus into a $1 trillion deficit and doubling the national debt, passing a $7 trillion unfunded entitlement program and promoting a foreign policy so utopian it would have made Woodrow Wilson blush. Voters made Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House in 2006 and Barack Obama president in 2008.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-killing-the-republican-party/2017/07/16/048056dc-68c4-11e7-a1d7-9a32c91c6f40_story.html

[Squinch]

1. No, people like Joe Scarborough and Newt Gingrich and the other members of the congressional

class of 1994 killed the republican party.

What we are seeing now is just the logical result of what they started.

Scarborough makes me ill.

[cwydro]

2. Yep.

What you said.

[Squinch]

4. I used to wonder how my dear departed father could ever have been a Republican. Then I read the 1957

Republican platform. It's awesome. I can only imagine how fabulously liberal the Democratic one must have been if that was what the Republican one was.

I'm not naive and I know there has always been corruption. I know there's no such thing as the good old days, and I'm not forgetting that in 1957 I would have had about half the civil rights I have today. But it seems as if once upon a time, our political parties BOTH at least aimed to work for the benefit of the voters.

[cwydro]

6. Yes,my parents were both registered as Republicans when they both became citizens. (UK natives)

However, both were very socially liberal.

Both changed their affiliation after the election of Shrub. Both voted for Obama.

Mom died soon after the scum became president. She was horrified.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. .

.

[Paladin]

5. Some major CYA efforts by Joe Scab.

It's not working.

[Squinch]

8. Yep. He'll always be the man who legitimized Donald Trump(R) for the uninformed voter.

[3catwoman3]

12. What's that old saw about...

..."a day late and a dollar short?"

[Hieronymus]

13. I've not trusted Joe

since was in the house. The few times i saw the show I admired Mike, but no more since she's sleeping with Joe.

[Towlie]

7. Saying Trump is killing the Republican Party is like saying a swarm of flies is attracting garbage.

[spanone]

9. no joe, trump and the republican party are KILLING AMERICA

[malaise]

10. Really - has he seen this?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10029326422

Does he know the turtle's wife is in the Cabinet?

They are all in this together

[ginnyinWI]

11. The GOP is dying of old age.

Apparently there is a lifespan to political parties. It is old and senile and out of touch with everyday people. It is forgetting how to do more and more things. Pretty soon it will be in Depends and won't remember how to use a fork.

Everyone who has relied upon it to keep things going is being disappointed because it can't function any more. It has become so old, so stiff, so calcified that it can't function and this won't be reversible.

[TlalocW]

14. I feel sorry for Joe

He just misses the good old days when Trump mocking the disabled made him laugh.

TlalocW