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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Sat Aug 20, 2016, 12:58 PM Aug 2016

Why 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 opponent—and he is my opponent, not my enemy.” And John McCain could firmly reject the idea that Barack Obama was an alien presence—in fact not even a legitimate American. "I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t 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” movement—raising 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 Pennsylvania—where he now trails by double-digits—is 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 Breitbart’s conspiracy-encouraging reports about Justice Antonin Scalia’s “suspicious” death, Hillary Clinton’s 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 Post’s Robert Costa tweeted. "Huge rallies. Gloves off. Brutal fights with Clinton. Heavy emphasis on nationalism and populism. That's the Bannon strategy."

It’s also the strategy that Trump’s onetime aide, Roger Stone—who has appeared on Bannon's radio show bashing Clinton and her staff—outlined 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 there’s voter fraud. If there’s 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 he’s 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

8 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Why the GOP Will Never Accept President Hillary Clinton - By Jeff Greenfield (Original Post) DonViejo Aug 2016 OP
Ironic that the party that thrives on electoral fraud would raise the issue guillaumeb Aug 2016 #1
Classic clinical projection. Which is the basis of all rightwing politics. nt villager Aug 2016 #2
Why I will never accept the republican party by workinclasszero workinclasszero Aug 2016 #3
Far too much truth in there... Wounded Bear Aug 2016 #4
The GOP will never accept President Clinton. hamsterjill Aug 2016 #5
^^this^^ Freddie Aug 2016 #7
"their inauguration will be a … bloodbath???" LongTomH Aug 2016 #6
The point they passed 8 years ago Cosmocat Aug 2016 #8

guillaumeb

(42,641 posts)
1. Ironic that the party that thrives on electoral fraud would raise the issue
Sat Aug 20, 2016, 01:03 PM
Aug 2016

of electoral fraud. Classic Karl Rove strategy.

 

workinclasszero

(28,270 posts)
3. Why I will never accept the republican party by workinclasszero
Sat Aug 20, 2016, 01:10 PM
Aug 2016

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)
4. Far too much truth in there...
Sat Aug 20, 2016, 01:14 PM
Aug 2016

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)
5. The GOP will never accept President Clinton.
Sat Aug 20, 2016, 01:33 PM
Aug 2016

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)
7. ^^this^^
Sat Aug 20, 2016, 01:42 PM
Aug 2016

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.

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