If Hillary Clinton, disliked by countless American voters for her abrasiveness and putative dishonesty, were to compete in a Miss Congeniality contest, she most probably will not win. Yet, as she runs for president of the United States, it is not implausible to imagine her capturing the general election in November. And it’s all thanks to her best supporter — the irascible and unpredictable loose cannon we call, with an incredulous shake of the head, Donald Trump.
None other than the former House Speaker and close friend of the Republican nominee, Newt Gingrich — himself not an altogether genial character — averred that Trump has damaged his party following last week’s snafus, most notably his assault against an elderly Muslim Gold Star couple whose son had fallen fighting in the US army in Iraq. Gingrich was convinced that, before he threw away the election, the New York tycoon had no more than a few weeks to reboot, pivot away from his rhetoric and reverse course.
We should take everything that an opportunistic politician and insufferable bully like Gingrich says with a grain of salt (he’s convinced that “the Palestinian identity is fake”), but in this one instant he may be right. We know that Trump has gotten himself to a point of no return in the campaign when we learn that, alarmed at the turmoil he has caused in recent days, Republican party leaders and strategists have become ever more frustrated, ever more deeply disturbed, by their out-of-control nominee.
The Washington Post last Thursday titled its front-page lead article, highlighting that alarm, thus: “GOP at ‘new level of panic’ over Trump.” The day before, in a state of denial, he told a rally in Florida that “the campaign is doing really well, it’s never been so well united.” How his nose must have grown in length as he said that in front of an anxious crowd beset by concerns about the troubled waters he was leading them and his party to!
Some top GOP fundraisers, who these days appear to be gong through one of those Oh-Gosh-what-have-we-done moments, by electing this unelectable hot-head as our presidential candidate, have turned their attention to the Senate races and away from the presidential election, pouring their time and money into trying, at the very least, to protect the Republican majority there.
Wise move. Last week alone, the divisive candidate triggered all manner of intraparty feuds — he refused to endorse fellow Republicans Paul Ryan and John McCain for re-election, respectively as current House Speaker and Senior Senator from Arizona — thus creating a rift between himself and his own running mate, Mike Pence, who chose not to go along withe snub.
He invited Vladimir Putin to hack into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail account. He criticized Ghazala Khan for “standing silently” by the side of her husband, Khizir, as he gave a memorable seven-minute speech at the Democratic National Convention in which the bereaved father of a fallen American patriot questioned whether Trump had read the American constitution and testily offered to lend the shameless nominee his own copy. Mrs. Khan had kept silent reportedly to control her grief, not because she was, as Trump implied, a “docile Muslim wife” prevented from speaking her mind.
That kind of assault on a Gold Star parent, the mother of a fallen Muslim American soldier, who sacrificed his life in service to the nation, predictably elicited widespread denunciations. The term “Gold Star mother” is as revered in the US as it is in our part of the world, where it is known as “Umm al-Shaheed,” that confers an equally exultant status. (In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation declaring the last Sunday in September Gold Star Mother’s Day.)
Trump’s outrage brought rebukes from veteran groups and from other Americans, including Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, himself a veteran of the Iraq war, who said last Wednesday on CNN: “Donald Trump for me is beginning to cross a lot of red lines of the unforgivable in politics.”
And in another high-profile stand against the candidate, Rep. Richard Hanna broke ranks and became the first Republican member of Congress to endorse Hillary Clinton, declaring pointedly: “We should be done with Trump.”
Done with a man who has pilloried Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, women, the disabled and ... well, who else had he not alienated? Done with a loudmouth whose extremism is unmatched in modern times — not even by that of Barry Goldwater, the goal of whose presidential campaign in 1964 was to “revive” American conservatism but ended up scaring American voters. It may be too late, I say, for Trump to reboot, pivot away from his rhetoric and reverse course. Meanwhile his campaign woes continue to grow.
Finally, the issue is not really how America has become saddled with Donald Trump, but how so many millions of Americans remain responsive, adamantly and ardently responsive, to his toxic message.
None other than the former House Speaker and close friend of the Republican nominee, Newt Gingrich — himself not an altogether genial character — averred that Trump has damaged his party following last week’s snafus, most notably his assault against an elderly Muslim Gold Star couple whose son had fallen fighting in the US army in Iraq. Gingrich was convinced that, before he threw away the election, the New York tycoon had no more than a few weeks to reboot, pivot away from his rhetoric and reverse course.
We should take everything that an opportunistic politician and insufferable bully like Gingrich says with a grain of salt (he’s convinced that “the Palestinian identity is fake”), but in this one instant he may be right. We know that Trump has gotten himself to a point of no return in the campaign when we learn that, alarmed at the turmoil he has caused in recent days, Republican party leaders and strategists have become ever more frustrated, ever more deeply disturbed, by their out-of-control nominee.
The Washington Post last Thursday titled its front-page lead article, highlighting that alarm, thus: “GOP at ‘new level of panic’ over Trump.” The day before, in a state of denial, he told a rally in Florida that “the campaign is doing really well, it’s never been so well united.” How his nose must have grown in length as he said that in front of an anxious crowd beset by concerns about the troubled waters he was leading them and his party to!
Some top GOP fundraisers, who these days appear to be gong through one of those Oh-Gosh-what-have-we-done moments, by electing this unelectable hot-head as our presidential candidate, have turned their attention to the Senate races and away from the presidential election, pouring their time and money into trying, at the very least, to protect the Republican majority there.
Wise move. Last week alone, the divisive candidate triggered all manner of intraparty feuds — he refused to endorse fellow Republicans Paul Ryan and John McCain for re-election, respectively as current House Speaker and Senior Senator from Arizona — thus creating a rift between himself and his own running mate, Mike Pence, who chose not to go along withe snub.
He invited Vladimir Putin to hack into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail account. He criticized Ghazala Khan for “standing silently” by the side of her husband, Khizir, as he gave a memorable seven-minute speech at the Democratic National Convention in which the bereaved father of a fallen American patriot questioned whether Trump had read the American constitution and testily offered to lend the shameless nominee his own copy. Mrs. Khan had kept silent reportedly to control her grief, not because she was, as Trump implied, a “docile Muslim wife” prevented from speaking her mind.
That kind of assault on a Gold Star parent, the mother of a fallen Muslim American soldier, who sacrificed his life in service to the nation, predictably elicited widespread denunciations. The term “Gold Star mother” is as revered in the US as it is in our part of the world, where it is known as “Umm al-Shaheed,” that confers an equally exultant status. (In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation declaring the last Sunday in September Gold Star Mother’s Day.)
Trump’s outrage brought rebukes from veteran groups and from other Americans, including Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, himself a veteran of the Iraq war, who said last Wednesday on CNN: “Donald Trump for me is beginning to cross a lot of red lines of the unforgivable in politics.”
And in another high-profile stand against the candidate, Rep. Richard Hanna broke ranks and became the first Republican member of Congress to endorse Hillary Clinton, declaring pointedly: “We should be done with Trump.”
Done with a man who has pilloried Muslims, Mexicans, immigrants, women, the disabled and ... well, who else had he not alienated? Done with a loudmouth whose extremism is unmatched in modern times — not even by that of Barry Goldwater, the goal of whose presidential campaign in 1964 was to “revive” American conservatism but ended up scaring American voters. It may be too late, I say, for Trump to reboot, pivot away from his rhetoric and reverse course. Meanwhile his campaign woes continue to grow.
Finally, the issue is not really how America has become saddled with Donald Trump, but how so many millions of Americans remain responsive, adamantly and ardently responsive, to his toxic message.
