Bolting
Republicans continue to flee Trump. I doubt that his antics this afternoon will turn that around.
In what seems like a nearly daily occurrence, Republicans are bolting their party’s nominee. But if not him, who? Some are going so far as to endorse Democratic rival Hillary Clinton; others, like Maine Sen. Susan Collins on Tuesday, are just saying they can’t stomach supporting the GOP nominee.
…
Last week, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois announced he will not back Trump, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “I’m an American before I’m a Republican.”Kinzinger, however, will not vote for Clinton either. Instead, he may write in a candidate. He joins Mark Kirk, an Illinois senator, who in June withdrew his endorsement of Trump.On Monday in the Washington Post and Tuesday on CNN, Collins, a moderate GOP senator, said she would not support Trump because he “does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country.” She didn’t say whom she’d vote for in November, but told CNN it won’t be Clinton.
Yesterday there was the letter from the security boffins:
Fifty of the nation’s most senior Republican national security officials, many of them former top aides or cabinet members for President George W. Bush, have signed a letter declaring that Donald J. Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” to be president and “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”
Mr. Trump, the officials warn, “would be the most reckless president in American history.”
The letter says Mr. Trump would weaken the United States’ moral authority and questions his knowledge of and belief in the Constitution. It says he has “demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding” of the nation’s “vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances and the democratic values” on which American policy should be based. And it laments that “Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.”
A short way of putting it is that he’s not a grown-up. He’s not campaigning as a grown-up but as some kind of frat boy. I always felt that way about Bush Junior, too, but Trump is even worse than that.
While foreign policy elites in both parties often argue among themselves — behind closed doors, or politely in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine — it is extraordinarily rare for them to step into the political arena so publicly and aggressively. Several former midlevel officials issued a similar if milder letter in March, during the primaries. But Monday’s letter included many senior former officials who until now have remained silent in public, even while denouncing Mr. Trump’s policies over dinners or in small Republican conclaves.
…
The letter underscores the continuing rupture in the Republican Party, but particularly within its national security establishment. Many of those signing it had declined to add their names to the letter released in March. But a number said in recent interviews that they changed their minds once they heard Mr. Trump invite Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s email server — a sarcastic remark, he said later — and say that he would check to see how much NATO members contributed to the alliance before sending forces to help stave off a Russian attack. They viewed Mr. Trump’s comments on NATO as an abandonment of America’s most significant alliance relationship.
Mr. Trump has said throughout his campaign that he intends to upend Republican foreign policy orthodoxy on everything from trade to Russia, where he has been complimentary of President Vladimir V. Putin, saying nothing about its crackdown on human rights and little about its annexation of Crimea.
Why wouldn’t we want a pig-ignorant condo-developer and reality tv performer upending everything about current foreign policy? What’s the down side?
“We agreed to focus on Trump’s fitness to be president, not his substantive positions,” said John B. Bellinger III, who was Ms. Rice’s legal adviser at the National Security Council and the State Department, and who drafted the letter.
He said that among the signatories, “some will vote for” Mrs. Clinton, “and some will not vote, but all agree Trump is not qualified and would be dangerous.”
…
Yet perhaps most striking about the letter is the degree to which it echoes Mrs. Clinton’s main argument about her rival: that his temperament makes him unsuitable for the job, and that he should not be entrusted with the control of nuclear weapons.
Well that aspect does jump out at us. Then again I always thought that of Bush, too, though not to the same extent.
“He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood,” the letter says. “He does not encourage conflicting views. He lacks self-control and acts impetuously. He cannot tolerate personal criticism. He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior. All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be president and commander in chief, with command of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”
Some of that describes Bush.
I do think we have a bad habit of putting desperately underqualified and unsuitable people in this job. Trump is just the worst, he’s not unique.
Sen. Collins sure sounded sensible on NPR, until she lamented the fact that Jeb Bush wasn’t the nominee.
Sheesh.
I guess that’s a big problem with nuclear weapons generally. We can’t trust humanity with them in general – perhaps the very fact that we made them in the first place shows that we shouldn’t have them. It’s amazing we haven’t already blown ourselves up.
I agree with you about Trump and W as frat boys. Bush was the happy-drunk sort of frat boy, just wanting to have a good time, but Trump is the angry-drunk type—the bully, the abuser.
That’s really not striking at all. Mainly because it’s not so much “Mrs. Clinton’s argument” as it is “blindingly obvious fact to anyone who observes the man for more than three seconds.”
The political media’s fetish for “balance” has never been more nakedly obvious—nor nakedly craven—as it is every time someone lumps in a sane, rational observation as one “side” of an argument…as though “maybe we SHOULD use Patriot Missiles tactically” were a valid conclusion in any grown-up system of ideas. That same way of thinking is almost entirely responsible for the proliferation of all kinds of denial, from that of evolution to climate change to vaccines.
Objectivity means presenting conclusions that any reasonable disinterested party would likely arrive at, given the evidence under examination. It doesn’t mean selecting two diametrically opposite conclusions and asking an uninformed public to choose between them without even presenting the evidence. I don’t know why that’s so fucking hard for journalists to understand.
How to “prove” 2 + 2 = 5:
You say it’s 4
I say it’s 6
Therefore the “neutral”, “unbiased” solution is 5.
Q.E.D.
As far as I can determine, Trump has never held an elected public office in his life so far. He has not even run for dog catcher in his borough of NYC.
This of course, has its upside.He has no record of failure, corruption, disaster (or even of success)
So if elected, how can he possibly go wrong?
It’s a pity all these Republican naysayers didn’t speak up before the convention. It’s not like this is some sort of new trend on Trump’s part. Every bit of this has been part of his very deliberately public persona since the 80s. Had the Republicans any moral character at all, they would’ve been unendorsing Trump from the get-go, declaring that they would not run on a ticket with him at the top. THAT would have impressed me. Saying, “I don’t like the guy, but it’s still more important that I get elected than that he does not,” isn’t really going to do it.
I do think we’re going to turn back from the brink, here, but I also worry. Hillary has a knack for cooling the base–such as the recent blurb about her wanting to consult with various GOP foreign policy types for their input. If the base doesn’t turn out, I think we’ll still get Hillary by default, but downticket will suffer–Republicans who show up to vote against Trump will make sure to try to push the downticket races in their direction to compensate.
Fallacy of the golden mean. How many times have you heard someone say “I’ll just split the difference”? And the media is always calling for a “moderate” view, as if being in the middle of the road automatically means you are correct.
And then, they move one side so far toward the other side that the middle of the road moves to what was once one of the “extremes”. i.e. Clinton is by any definition a moderate, tending toward the right, but political discourse has moved so far to the right that she looks like a liberal to most people. Therefore, middle of the road becomes somewhere to the right of Nixon.
Omar @7,
I wonder, do people use this argument in job interviews?
“I’m afraid your resume doesn’t show any education, background, or experience that is relevant to this position.”
“That just means I’m an outsider!”
“You’re hired!”
Or you shitft the center by moving the other side even further in that same direction (If I argue that 2 + 2 = 16 while you still maintain the answer 4, then 10 becomes the new “middle” estimate). I have been thinking that Trump’s most harmful legacy (assuming, of course, that he’s not elected, in which case all bets are off) may be to make extremists like Ted Cruz seem moderate and reasonable…
There is literally no conceivable end to the “worse than’s.” Every single time I think some politician is the living end, someone comes along who is even worse, in ways that I’m not depraved enough to even imagine.
OB: “I do think we have a bad habit of putting desperately underqualified and unsuitable people in this job. Trump is just the worst, he’s not unique.”
The fact that he is the worst (ever) surely makes him unique.
Trump as POTUS would be a classic example of “learning by doing”: as in primary school. He would be a random number generator in a situation where precise measurement and accounting is needed. But to his credit, he has probably caused more google searches than any other POTUS candidate ever.
eg: Trump, nuclear war; (Contrast with: Trump, sense of humour..)
But rumor has it that Trump the astute real estate operator has been buying up big in Patagonian land.. The expectation is that if he wins the next US election, the values down there will go sky high, and he will make a killing. In their millions, Americans will be seeking to relocate. And where better?
How can he possibly lose?