When does it become a necessity for a political party to disown a campaign? This is the question that has hung over the Republican Party since the middle of May, when it became clear that Donald Trump had closed in on his 1,237 delegates, and now has assumed different forms: The moral one, or when does Trump’s unique mix of coarseness and cruelty start to corrode the Party of Lincoln to the point that its moral fabric becomes irreparable; and the practical one, which is when does that coarseness and cruelty, which every day seems to find some new and before-this-unthinkable means of expression, start to become an unbearable burden for Republican candidates who have to win an election in other than deeply red states?
Was it when Trump trashed John McCain’s war record? Was it when he mocked a disabled reporter? Was it when he tried to rouse a mob against the “Mexican judge” (born in Indiana) who was hearing a case brought against him by enraged victims of one of his so many scams? Or was it on the morning of July 29, when he launched a full-bore assault on the parents of Army Captain Humayun Khan, killed in Iraq in 2004, who spoke out against him at the Democratic convention on the night before?
All the times previous, Republicans who had endorsed him (early in May, when it seemed he was both the choice of the people and someone who might someday calm down and act like a candidate) tried to straddle the divide between common sense, common morality and what they conceived of as duty to party by trying to say that they still endorsed him. They all did this while taking strong, intense and vigorous issue with each and every last thing that Trump said. He was a racist, but they still endorsed him. He was a fool, but they still endorsed him. He was an ignoramus, but they still endorsed him. Now he’s not only those things but is justly described as a monster of callousness, as an idiot so obtuse that he conflates getting rich with making a sacrifice, and perhaps worst of all, too dumb to realize what ought to have gone without without saying, that ATTACKING THE GOLD STAR PARENTS OF A DEAD SOLDIER-HERO IS STUPIDEST THING YOU CAN DO. Making it worse is the fact that just as l’affaire Khan reached hurricane status, Trump affirmed and denied that he was a friend and a fan boy of Putin, that he had no interest at all in the future of NATO, and no knowledge of the fact that the Soviet Union was now in Ukraine at all.
In 2015, Fortune magazine has reported, car companies paid immense fortunes in fines as a result of selling to an unwitting public products they knew were unsafe. Toyota paid $1.2 billion in fines to avoid prosecution; GM $900 million, and makers of airbags another huge sum for defects that caused eight deaths and 100 injuries, saying, “Honda, one of the companies, using the bags, and Takata [the bag manufacturer] knew about the dangerous airbags for years.” Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence, et al are trying to sell us a dangerous gas bag, under the claim that he is a standard issue Republican model, a normal sedan like so many others, while knowing too well the clutch doesn’t work, the steering’s erratic, and the brakes don’t exist. Will they wake up in time, before the worst happens? Or one day will we see them in court?
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
