HIJACKING THE BANDWAGON

The little flap du jour about Donald Trump is supposed by Pinko Liberals to signal the beginning for the end for Trump's candidacy. (In this case, the term "Pinko" refers to their rose-colored spectacles). It won't hurt Trump with his constituency any more than any of the previous mis-statements he's made. Does anyone really expect an apology, back-pedal, or even correction from this sociopath? By his own statement, he's never confessed such even to God--because he's never been in the wrong! For anyone who has awakened just today from a coma, I am referring to The Donald's failure to correct the bigot who so confidently "posed a question" to him in which he asserted that Muslims are the problem, and that President Obama is a Muslim and a foreigner. (Trump continues "not to know" if the President was born in the U. S.) Recent polling indicates that 43% of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim (29% of Americans), and 20% of Americans believe he was born outside the United States (CNN/ORC poll). What occurs to me is that, if this idiocy does not bring down the American republic, it may bring to an end the Republican Party. Yet it is the result of a deliberate, sustained plan for overcoming the majority of Americans who call themselves Democrats and retaking control of the national government in all three of its balancing branches. For many years, the strategy has worked remarkably well. The Tea Party, scary as it is, may be the Bridge Too Far that collapses the whole plan. Better than anyone, they reveal the core of the strategy. Remember when white Southerners were Yellow Dog Democrats? ("'You'd vote for that yeller dawg.' 'Wal, just as long as he wuz a Democrat.'") Now, the southern states are red states. What happened? The Civil Rights Act, that's what happened, sponsored and passed by the Democrats, along with the Voting Rights Act and other "liberal" legislation, all opposed by the Republican Party. In the 1960's, the GOP Bandwagon pulled up at the South's town square, and all the Yellow Dogs climbed on. There were never enough fiscal conservatives to win an election, local or national. The 1% are certainly not enough. WASPs are not enough. Generally traditionally-minded people are not enough. The GOP had to, and still has to, boost the number of its monied base by recruiting all the racists, neo-Nazis, Xenophobes, chauvinists, homophobes, misogynists, and Christian Triumphalists it can muster. These are people for whom voting Republican means voting against their own economic self-interests, but fear and anger can cause people to do just that. The strategy worked so effectively, it even brought together Protestant Evangelicals and traditional Roman Catholics, an amazing feat, and the leadership of both groups became the GOP's most ardent campaigners. Of course, it was never the plan that this motley assortment would assert its own will, or even have a will, or set of wills, of its own. It was supposed to be completely malleable, led by the nose-ring of its own prejudices and fears, as was the case for several decades. The Tea Party Movement, whose heart is mainly in opposition to any taxation to benefit the public as a whole, fired the first shots of the rebellion. But they set off a chain reaction, which alienated the more socially-reactionary element. The result is that at the moment, no one who has ever actually served as an elected GOP office-holder is worth considering to be the party's nominee for President of the United States. The Tea-Party-driven strategy of taking over the reigns of government by grinding it to a halt has backfired so badly that even the socially-conservative Republicans rate Congress as a total bust. Thus the Establishment let onto their Bandwagon a rabble of people with whom they would rather not associate normally, in order to use their fear, anger, and gullibility to their own advantage, only to find that very rabble now hijacking the Bandwagon. In effect, the Republican Party of Eisenhower, Goldwater, Ford, and even Dulles no longer exists. It has gone the way of the Whigs before them, in every way but (so far) its name. The question now is more complicated than who the nominee of the Republican Party for President will be. It also is yet to be determined who the Republican Party will be. Can it hold itself together one more time, or will it split, and if so, into how many pieces? The Conservatism of the remainder of this century will, no doubt continue, but what form or forms will it take? Even Mr. Trump, for all his loquaciousness, will not be able to give us the answer to that one.