Drip, Drip, Drip

[cali]

For Donald Trump's fellow Republicans, this campaign is increasingly about binary choices, but not Donald versus Hillary; rather it's about denialism versus defection and denunciation versus renunciation.


The poster boy for denialism is House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose speech in Cleveland last month made him seem like he had wandered in from a different political convention. He gave an earnest, optimistic, forward-looking speech, a stark contrast to virtually everything else uttered from the podium that week. Ryan has seemed walled off from the actual political freak show going on around him. Occasionally reality intrudes and either he has to admit that Donald Trump is a racist or, as he said Thursday, that Trump's attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan are "beyond the pale." But he quickly reassures himself and anyone listening that said beyond-the-pale bigot is the most qualified choice for the presidency.

<snip>

But here's the key thing: Do Ryan, McCain and Ayotte support Donald Trump for the presidency? Unwaveringly. When forced to answer for Trump by name the GOP formula has been denounce but don't renounce. (And Trump only underscores their fecklessness, refusing to endorse Ryan and McCain in their primaries and suggesting that Ayotte is "weak" and disloyal.) On one level their basic political calculation is understandable: They need Trump voters in order to survive in November; but they are in danger of disappearing into a growing chasm between those voters and everyone else.

<snip> (list of many "drips&quot

Drip: Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman, who has pointedly declined to say who he's voting for, released a television ad promising to "stand up to" Trump if The Donald is elected president. Colorado should be a swing state but is generally now seen as being safely in Clinton's column.

<snip>

Add up enough drops and you've got a flood. The interregnum is what The Washington Post's Greg Sargent has called the "dignity window," which for Republican leaders is inexorably closing. "If individual Republicans don't break off their support for Trump's candidacy now ... they run the risk of having no choice but to do so after Trump sinks even further into wretchedness and depravity, to a point of true no return," Sargent wrote this week. "At that juncture, their move will look unprincipled and desperate, leaving them stained – perhaps irrevocably – with their previous willingness to stick by him during much of his descent, and depriving their break with him of whatever moral force it might have had if done earlier."

<snip>

Trump is Palin on steroids and come the flood many so-called leaders will find themselves swept away.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-05/republican-defections-from-trump-accelerate

[Cooley Hurd]

1. The most fascinating election of my lifetime!

There's a point of no return for Trump (to be able to turn his #'s around and have any chance of winning in Nov) and he *might* have already passed it.

The only reason many Repugs have given any support or endorsement to him has been their fear that the Supreme Court will swing back to a Liberal/Progressive majority. But, the danger for them is to have the Trump albatross hung around their neck for perpetuity.

[cali]

2. If you haven't, read the whole piece. It's quite qood- well written and salient.

[Hortensis]

3. Absolutely! The GOP leadership seems to be

between a rock and a giant berzerker pumpkin, though. Trump's base is hardening around him, and the party has no chance of keeping control of the Senate if its leadership offends its base further by renouncing him. Even their control of the House is considered potentially at risk.

As for Trump's withdrawing on his own (possibly almost as big a disaster for the rest of the ticket), that could be both less and more likely now (no one would know, probably not even Trump!) that the money pouring in will allow him to pay back the loans he made to his own campaign (apparently over $45 million). He may eventually even be able to make good on his boast that he'll make money from running.

Btw, I believe the point of no return has already passed with the issues of Trump's mental impairment, his frightening interest in using nuclear weapons, and his connections to the Kremlin now out in the open. That's without everything else he's done, and anything else that could happen, including a terrorist strike in the U.S. The latter might help the GOP hold Congress, though.

[geek tragedy]

4. he's a virus that winds up killings its host nt

[cali]

6. What a good way of putting it.

[Cryptoad]

5. GOP has no recourse but to,,,,

split into two parties either now or later when out of the ashes left from this election! its a win win for the Democratic Party!

[longship]

7. That's a good article.

BTW, Robert Schlesinger is the son of historian Arthur Schlesinger.

[cali]

8. I didn't know that. Interesting. Yeah, it's quite a good article.