Republicans deserve to be stuck with Donald Trump, the monster they created

GOP con­sumed by cri­sis as more Repub­li­cans call on Trump to quit.

Pres­sure Mounts on Trump to Step Aside.

Trump Says He Won’t Quit as Repub­li­can Offi­cials Aban­don Him.

These are just some of the head­lines we’re see­ing in big media today fol­low­ing The Wash­ing­ton Post’s pub­li­ca­tion of an extreme­ly lewd, behind the scenes con­ver­sa­tion record­ed ten years ago between Don­ald Trump and Bil­ly Bush pri­or to a tap­ing of a soap opera cameo. Mul­ti­ple high pro­file Repub­li­can elect­ed offi­cials who had grudg­ing­ly or con­di­tion­al­ly endorsed him with­drew their sup­port Sat­ur­day after Trump failed to demon­strate any gen­uine remorse for his comments.

Mean­while, top mem­bers of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion called on Trump to quit the race, which he pro­ceed­ed to angri­ly and loud­ly refuse to do.

“There are no excus­es for Don­ald Trump’s offen­sive and demean­ing com­ments in the just released video; no woman should ever be vic­tim­ized by this kind of inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior. He alone bears the bur­den of his con­duct and alone should suf­fer the con­se­quences,” said Sen­a­tor John McCain, the par­ty’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee, in a state­ment renounc­ing his endorse­ment of Trump.

Sor­ry, Sen­a­tor McCain, but you can­not deny your cul­pa­bil­i­ty here. This is a mess of your par­ty’s mak­ing. The seeds for Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­na­tion were sown long ago. Trump is mere­ly the raw, rep­til­ian man­i­fes­ta­tion of the nasty and destruc­tive pol­i­tics that have come to define the mod­ern Repub­li­can Party.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty began as an anti­slav­ery par­ty in the 1800s; many of its lead­ers were the stal­wart pro­gres­sives of their day who yearned and fought for greater free­dom and equal­i­ty for all Amer­i­cans. Alas, those days are ancient history.

Today, the Repub­li­can Par­ty rep­re­sents the worst of Amer­i­ca. It has been tak­en over by a prej­u­diced, xeno­pho­bic right wing move­ment that can­not even be called con­ser­v­a­tive because its mem­bers are not for con­serv­ing any­thing at all.

Many Repub­li­cans say Don­ald Trump does­n’t speak for them. But he is their nom­i­nee. And not by acci­dent, either. Trump is not a fluke. Trump is, again, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of what Repub­li­can pol­i­tics have mor­phed into.

Trump open­ly espous­es views held by the par­ty’s base. To them, Trump’s raunchy, deroga­to­ry com­men­tary is unfil­tered and refreshing.

The mod­ern base of the Repub­li­can Par­ty con­sists of peo­ple who want to ban an entire reli­gion from this coun­try — some­thing the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States explic­it­ly pro­hibits — deport mil­lions of fam­i­lies who came here seek­ing bet­ter lives, deny women con­trol over their own bod­ies, and exac­er­bate Amer­i­ca’s gun vio­lence epi­dem­ic by allow­ing and encour­ag­ing firearms to be car­ried everywhere.

Giv­en their extreme views and their mil­i­tan­cy, why would the Repub­li­can base find Trump’s hor­rif­ic com­ments about women from 2005 problematic?

Many Repub­li­can vot­ers are fierce­ly loy­al to Trump, as we saw in Wis­con­sin just this week­end, where Paul Ryan faced a crowd angry that he had dis­in­vit­ed Trump from mak­ing a joint cam­paign appear­ance with him.

They’re not unhap­py or dis­gust­ed that Trump gloat­ed about grop­ing women eleven years ago — they’re unhap­py that Paul Ryan is not open­ly embrac­ing Trump in the wake of the pub­li­ca­tion of those com­ments, as they are.

At state­hood, Wash­ing­ton was a Repub­li­can state, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty was home to a strong pro­gres­sive wing for much of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. But those days are long gone now. The gov­er­nor­ship of Dan Evans is a dis­tant mem­o­ry. Today’s Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty is the par­ty of Don­ald Trump and Tim Eyman, not Dan Evans (or even Slade Gorton).

Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty Chair Susan Hutchison’s response to Trump’s lewd com­ments was — and I’m not kid­ding — to claim that Trump “was a Demo­c­rat” when he made his remarks. Even if that were true, it would not excuse what Trump said, nor would it jus­ti­fy Hutchison’s inde­fen­si­ble deci­sion to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing a man who deserves no one’s mon­ey, no one’s time, and no one’s vote.

It’s hard to believe Hutchi­son was once a news­cast­er or a can­di­date for King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive. She’s now a min­ion for the least qual­i­fied per­son ever to be nom­i­nat­ed by a major par­ty for the office of Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. How embarrassing.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty is so hos­tile to pro­gres­sivism and prag­ma­tism now that it would be sure­ly be unrec­og­niz­able to a time trav­el­er from even the 1970s.

The Repub­li­can Par­ty’s extreme right­ward shift has cre­at­ed huge prob­lems in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. When each par­ty had a pro­gres­sive wing and a con­ser­v­a­tive wing (in some regions of the coun­try, not all) they were more bal­anced. Pro­gres­sives and par­tial pro­gres­sives could work with each oth­er across par­ty lines to achieve things. That is increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult and uncom­mon every­where, but espe­cial­ly in Congress.

Now that the Repub­li­can Par­ty has been take over by the extreme right, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is the only option now for any­one who wants to belong to any­thing remote­ly resem­bling a “big tent” polit­i­cal par­ty. That’s not a good thing.

We real­ly need at least two par­ties com­mit­ted to gov­ern­ing prag­mat­i­cal­ly. And we don’t enjoy that now giv­en what’s hap­pened to the Repub­li­can Party.

The two-par­ty sys­tem seems like­ly to endure — it’s already sur­vived a Civ­il War, the Gild­ed Age, two world wars, and a depres­sion — so if that’s what we’re going to con­tin­ue to have, it’d be ide­al for those two par­ties to be a) an unabashed­ly pro­gres­sive par­ty free of neolib­er­al­ism, and b) a loy­al oppo­si­tion par­ty con­tain­ing a mix of par­tial pro­gres­sives and rea­son­able conservatives.

Right now, one of our major par­ties has become a vehi­cle for neo­fas­cism, while the oth­er faces what you could say is some­thing of an iden­ti­ty crisis.

This is a dan­ger­ous devel­op­ment for Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. This is a dan­ger­ous moment in our coun­try’s his­to­ry. Two men who believe in very un-Amer­i­can ideas (Don­ald Trump and Mike Pence) have got­ten unac­cept­ably close to the Pres­i­den­cy and Vice Pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed States. And again, not by acci­dent. They had help.

Estab­lished Repub­li­cans like John McCain, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell may not want to admit it or accept it, but they and the Repub­li­can Noise Machine enabled Don­ald Trump’s rise. Trump is their true reflec­tion. They all deserve to go down togeth­er, and be replaced by a new two-par­ty sys­tem that unequiv­o­cal­ly repu­di­ates neo­fas­cism, xeno­pho­bia, and misogyny.