Republican Party Have A Date, On November 8, With The Monster They Helped To Create

By Yvonne Sam
PRIDE Guest Columnist

Lyrics to a song made famous by the Carpenters, “We’ve only just begun”, run thus, “sharing horizons that are new to us, watching the signs along the way”.

How applicable are these words to the US Republican Party, now behaving as if it failed to see any of the tell-tale signs pointing to its Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, becoming an eventual liability to the party.

The irony lies in the fact that some of the leaders and political pundits, who are now calling for a counterrevolution against Trump, were formerly welcoming his input to the debate. The American public has been forced to masticate the proceedings of a campaign without ideological questions or public matters being hashed out. Now, they have nothing to complain about, as according to the apocryphal saying, they are living in interesting times.

Away from the campaign it is worth taking a look at how extraordinary these times are.

Never in recent times or aged recall has a major party Presidential hopeful, front runner and eventual nominee been so torpedoed by immense character concerns forcing significant members of the same party to openly and publicly abandon him.

Both Trump and Democratic Presidential nominee, Hilary Clinton, have been described by the American populace as the two worst presidential nominees in living memory, with Trump’s behavior sending the Republican Party in a state of Dionysian delirium, undoubtedly heralding the beginning of the end.

How did all this happen?

Be assured that it is not an overnight fluke, or a twinkling of the eye occurrence. No, the Republican leaders brought it all on themselves. Over the years they slowly unleashed a toxic politics of fear and resentment, oftentimes blended with a tincture of racial hostility, and they could never appease the unrealistic expectations that they nurtured among supporters.

Speaking from a politically correct angle, the Republicans created Trump through opposing US President, Barack Obama. He was fed by the party, gradually grew stronger and is now strong enough to destroy them all.

What about the Republican party’s repertoire?

The constant threats to close down the government over policy and legislation disagreements; the relentless calls for nullification of Supreme Court decisions; the internal plots against party leaders, who refused to be part of the general demolition; the emphasis that compromise was tantamount to betrayal; all of which gave the message to Republican voters that party leadership, political traditions, government, institutions, and even parties themselves, were things to be ignored, avoided, overthrown, insulted and even laughed at.

Shortly after Obama assumed the Presidency, the top-ranking Republican in the US senate, Mitch McConnell, admitted that making Obama a one-term president was his number one priority.

From another perspective, Trump’s candidacy highlights yet another in-house problem that has also been growing steadily, dating back to the Tea Party Movement. Yes, the Tea Party and their anti-government populism, conspiratorial traits, cyanide-like mix of resentments, and bias that emerged in reaction to President Obama and his agenda.

Instead of calling a spade a spade (as opposed to a mere garden tool) and accost the destructive elements of that movement, the Republicans instead tried to finesse, appease and gratify the Tea Party types.

The particulars of Trump’s attack on the parents of Captain Humayun Khan are familiar. The campaign of George W. Bush gained from Swift Boat’s Veterans for Truth’s smears that John Kerry, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, had lied about his service. Then Cindy Sheehan, a Gold Star mother, was called a clown by Karl Rove, the driving force behind Bush’s ascent to power, for merely protesting against the Iraq war that killed her son.

In a retributive manner of cosmic justice fit for a Greek tragedy, the party is being punished for its own political crimes.

In his book titled “Why the Right Went Wrong”, author E. J Dionne contends that Republican leaders repeatedly made impractical pledges of smaller governments, cessation of demographic change and the conservation of bygone values. Riding on their popularity high horse, the Republican Party profited from the allusion that Obama is a Muslim, an anti-American, and that his health care scheme would lead to death panels — a mix of negativism that many Republican leaders accepted as long as it was working for the party.

In 2011, still growing, but groom, and well supported, Trump began unearthing the “birther” nonsense about President Obama, an issue which he rode to the top of the polls. In 2012 he decided against the Presidential run, but returned this time, promising something much more dynamic than his Republican rivals had to offer.

The attack on legal and illegal immigrants had begun long before Trump announced his presidential candidacy. In 2012, Mitt Romney (the 2012 republican Presidential nominee) talked about self-deportation in an effort to set his way straight with the party’s anti-immigrant forces.

Also Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, abandoned his principles, and his immigration legislation, just as a precautionary measure against being driven from the presidential race before it had even begun.

Seizing the opportunity, Trump picked up from exactly where they had left off, siphoning from the reservoir of popular anger, xenophobia and bigotry that had already been unleashed by the party.

Trump served as the harvester of the fruit of the revolution. Now, the Republicans have only themselves to blame, expressing shame at the monster they have created.

Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous philosopher, said “man can endure anything but the truth”; in this case, the Republican Party must man-up and await Tuesday, November 8, with the monster they helped create.

Yvonne Sam, a retired Head Nurse and Secondary School Teacher, is Vice-president of the Guyana Cultural Association of Montreal. A regular columnist for over two decades with the Montreal Community Contact, her insightful and incursive articles on topics ranging from politics, human rights and immigration, to education and parenting have also appeared in the Huffington Post, Montreal Gazette, XPressbogg and Guyanese OnLine. She is also the recipient of the Governor General of Canada Caring Canadian Citizen Award.