It’s Baffling They Chose Such an Obvious End
In choosing Trump, back in 2016, Republicans took their party in their hands and gave it to someone who obviously, certainly, would be a disaster. They in effect said, “Here. Take our party. Take all that we’ve built with our efforts. Take all our connection with segments of the people. Take all our expectations for the future. Take them for a while, Mr. Disaster, and we’ll see what shape they’re in when you’re done”. I’m still utterly baffled by that.
If your teenager starts to hang around with a group that is constantly in serious trouble you don’t say, “Oh, good! You’ve got new friends”. No, you do everything you can do dissuade them because you know it’s not going to end well. You can’t know exactly how it will go wrong but you know for certain it will. That’s a level of sensibleness that even a moderately mature adult, a moderately reasonable person has. Yet the GOP did the equivalent of jumping at the chance to invite trouble.
Even then Trump had copious evidence of being a loser and a disaster. He had a horrible reputation for how he treated women. He frequently refused to pay contractors on his construction sites. He sank business after business: his meat company, his “university”, two casinos. He was plainly corrupt as with his charitable foundation that had to be shut down. He had become such a bad business risk that he couldn’t get anyone to loan him money. Not his wealthy connections, nor banks or finance outfits in the U.S. or Europe. He only got saved by one European bank that soon had it’s own major corruption problems and ties to Russian finances. The point being he was an obvious disaster that was clearly known and no secret.
It’s like walking with someone and you both see a nail sticking up from a board on the ground and you watch, astonished, as they deliberately step on it. I know people were frustrated, and conservative people wanted aggressive conservative change. Sure, so bypass the would-be aggressive leader who’s bound to create a disaster and keep beating the bushes for someone to fill that role well. But to just go ahead and step on that nail?
At that time I wrote that I mourned the loss of an old frenemy, the previous form of the Republican party. Not that I wanted them to do well but it’s better to have competition between two sane, rational parties, which keeps us on our toes, than to deal with chaos.
GOP leadership can’t just blame it on their public either. Yes, Trump was drawing crowds and support but party leadership could have said they got the message, they’d make some big, bold moves like what Trump was talking about, but not with him. It’s called leadership. A political party is a private enterprise. They could change their own rules any time to say they won’t nominate the most popular primary candidate if they deem him to be a danger to their party. Mind you this is supposed to be the party of business people and wealth accumulators who claim they could manage things better. Where was that supposed management skill on this?
If your family business that you depend on was doing poorly I get the desperate need to bring in someone to make it better. I sympathize. I understand that part. I was frustrated with undynamic Democratic leadership at the same time. But to turn that business over to someone with that track record, something almost as ridiculous as giving it to an intentional internal saboteur, is something outside of my ability to comprehend. That’s apparently a blind spot of mine because I just do not see why some group would do that.
So now, the result, which could be fully anticipated, is here.
I’m glad the Democrats have had a good election. Sad for the damage the country has suffered. Hoping this blue wave can be sustained by making good use of it. Baffled, likely forever, by the unfathomably blind and stupid (the word carefully chosen) choice of the competing party.
Time to move forward, watch, out of curiosity, how Republicans adapt to this, and see what Democrats do with this chance. But that piece of being baffled? That’s just there and is not going away.
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