Illustration by: Corey BrightAaron Stuber - Opinions Columnistabstuber@uab.edu
As Donald Trump’s poll numbers continue to fall against Clinton’s double-digit lead, one can’t help but stop and think about how we got here.
It seems that the inconsolable anger and rage of the Republican followers has poisoned the core values of the GOP during the past few months. I want to be clear. I am not talking about the Republicans who have different beliefs in how tax law should be applied, or who should own guns. I’m talking about the Republicans who get upset when asked to “Press 1 for English,” who believe that grabbing a woman by the pussy is the best way to control her and who think #repealthe19th is a serious option to be considered.
With eight years to try and change the absolute shit-show America has become, many Republicans now hope that 2016 is the year they will be able to take back the White House from the “filthy” Democrats that have held on to it. However, this begs the question: With all that time — eight years to pick your champion — you had to let it be Donald Trump?
Now, don’t misunderstand. From watching the election, it is almost impossible to argue that Trump is a stupid man. Yes, his sentences are small. They are easy to digest. They’re usually five words maximum. Even Carnegie Mellon published their study that confirmed Trump used the simplest language among any of the candidates running on the stage — GOP, Democrat and Libertarian alike.
But, it is this simple rhetoric Trump uses that has attracted the masses. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 93 million Americans are at a basic literacy level or below. This means that approximately 44 percent of Americans read at an eighth-grade level or below. So one can begin to see how many of the followers of Trump are so desperately, and pitifully, uninformed, even when he says to them that “one of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace, good people don’t go into government.” He probably couldn’t be more correct — especially about himself.
He says these words, yet it seems that Trump has a new scandal every week. One would think that even though he has accused Clinton of having debilitating health problems, he would have to be getting pretty damn tired of fighting his own lies by now. With comments ranging from saying that John McCain is not a war hero because he was captured, to insulting the Khan family, to the leaked tape of him confirming he has sexually abused women, one would think that the party would have abandoned him long before last week. Yet somehow, someone always seems to throw him a rope, and he always finds a way to hang himself with it.
And yet, with all of his faults, the fall of the GOP cannot be placed solely on Trump. The GOP descended once it abandoned its free-market principles. It declined once it championed-limited government decided that the government should tell people who to marry and what to do with their bodies. It diminished itself when it started attacking the very constitution it clings onto by making amendments one and two their cynosure, and ignoring three through 27.
With Republicans only winning two of the past six elections, their only hope of realigning Republican politics rested in George W. Bush’s hands, which unfortunately failed. And just like the 1964 indoctrination of Barry Goldwater (who also received KKK support) politics, so too has Trump rocked the boat to lead with the hatred and fear that eats away at the so-called “silent majority.” Trump’s egregious behavior and his cult-like followers have shown that America truly isn’t as great of a land as the Republicans think — it’s just unfortunate for them that they are the root cause of it.
His words have incited the anger of his followers, and those words almost seem to be a good enough of an excuse for the party’s behavior. There is no compassion in the party anymore. With some of his followers wishing death upon “stupid liberals,” physically harming protestors at his rallies and reciting the very bible flagrantly and easily ignoring the next minute in their actions. All this has shown that the silent majority has as much misplaced aggression as an overstimulated cat.
As of this week, in a last-ditch effort to save any semblance of their party, we have seen Paul Ryan speak for the GOP and write Trump off. The GOP knows all too well that the most recent scandal of Trump has gone too far. Yet, this withdrawal will probably not be enough. It is too late. The actions of Trump have pushed the disenchanted moderates of the party not to vote for him. The only ones remaining are the #neverkillary crowd, and that is going to cost the GOP some “down the ticket” votes.
The GOP knew from the beginning the kind of monster Trump would become, they just didn’t have the power to stop him — which is probably why they are now considering super-delegates as a part of their election process at the RNC.
UAB senior Marina Triplett, who identifies as mostly conservative, said it best.
“The RNC should have known not to support Trump in the first place,” Triplett said. “Instead of sticking to the principles that the Republican Party has stood behind for decades, the members of the GOP did whatever they could simply to keep their jobs.”
While many Americans believe that politics is like a football game, it isn’t. There is no “Team A” or
“Team B” or “my team is inherently better than your team.” The question of who can serve as president simply comes down to who would be the best statesman for the nation.
I’m not going to make the argument for Hillary Clinton by saying she is a good person — she inherently isn’t. Yet, as hindsight shows, she has always taken what is thrown at her. She has conducted herself with dignity in foreign countries, and they respect her for it. She has consistently shown that she supports children, families and small businesses.
And yet, as a Clinton presidency seems to be drawing near, it comes at a time for the GOP to reexamine its values once again. America is changing. The older members of the party are dying, and, for that reason, it seems that the newer members have forgotten what the party stood for.
Just as the Democratic Party has seen a shift to being more moderate, and with more progressive agendas being exemplified by Bernie Sanders, so too is time for the Republican Party to change.
Only time will answer the question: Can the party of “old-school” values rise to the challenge to create a party that will attract civilized support, or will it continue its descent into madness by just restating the issues that push moderate support away from it?
