2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumWhy the GOP Will Never Accept President Hillary Clinton - By Jeff Greenfield
With the hiring of Steve Bannon, Trump has ensured that the party will continue its habit of de-legitimizing the Dems.
By Jeff Greenfield
August 18, 2016
A long, long time ago (as recently as eight years, in fact) in a not-so-strange and distant land (our own, actually), it was not surprising that a candidate for president might have a kind word or two about his rival. Jimmy Carter could end a debate in 1976 by calling Gerald Ford a good and decent man; Bob Dole could remind the 1996 GOP convention that Bill Clinton is my opponentand he is my opponent, not my enemy. And John McCain could firmly reject the idea that Barack Obama was an alien presencein fact not even a legitimate American. "I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you dont have to be scared of as president of the United States, McCain told an agitated supporter in 2008.
But McCain and Dole were courtly exceptions in the modern Republican Party, whose present nominee, Donald Trump, has taken it in precisely the opposite direction. From the start of his rise to the top of the GOP, Trump has argued that not only are his Democratic adversaries wrong, they're not even legitimate. Trump first made his case as contender for the 2016 nomination by becoming the leading voice of the birther movementraising baseless suspicions about whether Obama was born in the United States. Now he has become a presidential nominee who argues that his opponent belongs in jail, and who says the only way he can lose the state of Pennsylvaniawhere he now trails by double-digitsis if there is cheating or "rigging." When lock her up! becomes the default chant at a Republican rally, good and decent woman is not likely to be on the lips of any GOP speaker in describing Hillary Clinton.
On Wednesday, we learned the tone is almost certain to get a lot uglier. Trump announced he was appointing Stephen Bannon, the firebrand CEO of right-wing Breitbart News, as his campaign chief executive, apparently ending the efforts of his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to moderate his message for the general election. Most pundits interpreted the move as a straightforward move toward further de-legitimizing Hillary Clinton, given Breitbarts conspiracy-encouraging reports about Justice Antonin Scalias suspicious death, Hillary Clintons health, and so on. Bannon has convinced Trump that rest of campaign needs to be bare-knuckles brawl, w/ full-bore populism/movement politics," The Washington Posts Robert Costa tweeted. "Huge rallies. Gloves off. Brutal fights with Clinton. Heavy emphasis on nationalism and populism. That's the Bannon strategy."
Its also the strategy that Trumps onetime aide, Roger Stonewho has appeared on Bannon's radio show bashing Clinton and her staffoutlined to Breitbart News earlier this month: Trump needs to say for example: I am leading in Florida. The polls all show it. If I lose Florida, we will know that theres voter fraud. If theres voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government. I think hes gotta put them on notice that their inauguration will be a
bloodbath. The government will be shut down if they attempt to steal this and swear Hillary in. No, we will not stand for it. We will not stand for it.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-gop-hillary-clinton-delegitimizing-dems-214170#ixzz4HtOixarC
guillaumeb
(42,641 posts)of electoral fraud. Classic Karl Rove strategy.
villager
(26,001 posts)workinclasszero
(28,270 posts)The are anti-american closet nazis that like to wave their military assault rifles around and scare unarmed women and children but were draft dodging yellow cowards when it was their turn to go to an actual war.
They also like to wave around their Bibles in public and claim to be Christian while doing the exact opposite of everything Jesus taught.
There are more reasons but that will do.
Wounded Bear
(58,436 posts)When a major political party and its adherents can't even recognize the irony of their own positions, what can we do but weather the storm?
Democracy depends, as much as anything, on the losers of elections accepting the will of the electorate. The Republicans are threatening that even as we prepare to vote this year. They've been undermining it for years, intesified it under Pres Obama, and I fear there may be violence once Hillary is elected.
hamsterjill
(15,214 posts)That's why WE THE PEOPLE need to give her a democratic Congress, and shove the GOP's ugliness right back down their throats.
Vote, people. Vote!!!!
Freddie
(9,231 posts)My only complaint about Obama was, at least in the beginning, his starry-eyed faith in human nature and belief that we could all "get together" and do what's best for the country. HRC has no such delusion and knows that any progress will come from our side alone. We *have* to give her the Senate and the first order of business will be to end the filibuster once and for all.
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)At what point does this become sedition or treason?
Cosmocat
(14,543 posts)But, IOKIYAR.