Editorial: Time for GOP to stand against bigotry, ‘disavow’ Trump OPINION
Posted: 4:27 p.m. Tuesday, March 1, 2016
He has boasted of having “the world’s greatest memory,” but suddenly on Sunday Donald J. Trump could not recall a thing about David Duke or the Ku Klux Klan.
It’s not like Duke is hard to place. He’s probably America’s best-known white supremacist and notorious anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist. And last week, the former Grand Wizard from Louisiana said that voting for anyone other than Trump “is really treason to your heritage.”
Now, usually in American politics, a connection with David Duke is something to run away from. In fact, Trump did just that in 2000, when ending a flirtation with a third-party run for president: “The Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke… This is not company I wish to keep.”
On Friday, Trump seemed to follow suit. “I disavow,” he said about Duke’s nod.
But on Sunday, Trump waffled when asked repeatedly on CNN if he would repudiate Duke and the KKK: “Just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke, OK? … I don’t know anything about what you’re talking about with white supremacy…”
The next day, Trump was blaming “a bad earpiece” for his acting dumb. And saying: “OK, all right, I disavow, OK?” As if what bothered him wasn’t the Klan but the media’s nagging him about it.
Thus, we have the front-running presidential candidate of the Republican Party appearing to nuzzle up to the most hateful elements of the electorate.
From the moment he declared his candidacy, promising to “make America great again” by keeping out Mexican drug dealers and rapists, Trump has been sending out signals that a David Duke can appreciate. He’ll bar entry to Muslims. He’ll deport 11 million “illegals.” He’ll punch a protester in the face. He’ll make the “media scum” sorry.
And now that he is poised to become its standard bearer, the Republican Party has a choice to make. Will the one-time Party of Lincoln distance itself from bigotry? Or will it let Trump super-impose his brand on everything noble it is supposed to stand for?
The Republican Party has dealt in racial divisiveness for decades, of course, from Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to welfare queens to Willie Horton. But the message was always coded. Trump is what happens when the codes are dropped.
At least one Republican, Stuart Stevens, a top adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential run, has made his choice.
“To support Trump is to support the hate and racism he embodies. That is simply an intolerable moral position for any political party,” Stevens wrote in the Daily Beast. “If Trump wins the nomination, politicians who support him will be acquiescing to, if not actively aiding, his hate.”
Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., a freshman conservative, chose, too. On Facebook, he decried Trump’s “relentless focus” on “dividing Americans” and saying a candidate who “refuses to condemn the KKK cannot lead a conservative movement in America.”
Sasse added that if “Donald Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option.”
The Associated Press asked Republican governors and senators across the country if they would support Trump as the nominee. Just under half of those responding would not commit to backing him.
It is time for Republicans to make a gut check. Rejecting Trump, should he win the nomination, would mean rupturing the party. It would probably cost the election. Yet as Stevens wrote, elections come again. Lost offices can be regained.
“But there is no mechanism to regain one’s dignity and sense of decency once squandered,” Stevens wrote.
Amen.
ABS Letter to the editor of the Palm Beach Post
Obama went to the church of the Black
Nationalist, Black Liberationist minister, Jeremiah Wright, for 20 years and so I am sure the Palm Beach Post demanded that Obama denounce Rev Wright when he ran for POTUS in 2008 but I am having a tough time recalling that demand but we can be sure y'all did because you do not have one moral standard for caucasian republicans and another moral standard for black democrats.
Could you remind your readers what it was the PBP said about Obama going to the Church of a Black Nationalist because we are all aware of what y'all think of David Duke, a man that is not a pastor and a man who does not have a church and a man whom Trump did not worship with for 20 years.
Just to jog some memories, Obama worshipped for 20 years at a Church where Rev Wright taught that AIDS was created by the Government, where Rev Wright preached anti-semitic conspiracies, and where Rev Wright opposed interracial marriages and praised communist dictatorships.