Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
A millionaire “playboy” in 2005 made absolutely revolting remarks about women.
He then had the misfortune to come up against the Clintons. His remarks have now come back to haunt Donald Trump. And no Republican supporter can in good conscience now vote for such a lout.
The Clinton apparat of spies and informers would be the envy of the Stasi or KGB. They are brilliant at engaging in what the Russians call “kompromat” (the term for compromising materials about a politician or other public figure). Nothing you have ever said or done will remain private.
Did you flunk arithmetic in grade two? The Clintons will know of it. Did you cheat pitching in a Little League baseball game at age nine? They will find out. Don’t run for office unless you’ve been in a coma since 1956.
There’s an element of irony in all this: it’s the liberal Democratic elites on the two coasts who are most responsible for the cheapening of American culture. They are the ones, rather than conservatives, who produce the movies, cable television shows, raunchy music, and so on, that sexualize women.
The timing was also convenient. Lost in the furor was the release by WikiLeaks of the transcripts of Hillary Clinton’s three speeches to the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, for which she was paid an astounding $675,000.
She suggested that Wall Street insiders were best qualified to regulate the banking industry and also included her apparent admission of the need for money from banking executives for political fundraising.
In a wink at the listeners, she remarked that “if everybody’s watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”
Following her departure from the State Department in 2013 she made about $3 million in speeches to banks and financial firms.
The saddest result of Trump’s downfall is that the issues that propelled him to win the Republican nomination – the hollowing out of the U.S. economy by globalization and consequent creation of the “precariat”; the dangers posed to America by illegal immigration and Islamist terrorism – will no longer be addressed.
Instead, these problems will continue to slowly destroy the American republic.
Trump’s destruction demonstrates that even a renegade billionaire oligarch is susceptible to elimination by a ruling class that holds state power. (Ask those who challenge Vladimir Putin.)
Anyhow, given all that, Donald Trump is now finished. Numerous Republicans running for office have deserted him.
Assuming Trump won’t quit, being the narcissistic egomaniac that he is, here’s what the Republicans should do:
It’s too late to remove his name from the ballot. Voting is already underway in many states, including by the military and those voting by absentee ballot.
So the Republican National Committee should announce that it will be instructing Republicans in all 50 states to write in Indiana governor Mike Pence and Ohio governor John Kasich as their choice for president and vice-president. This is a perfectly legal ballot option.
Kasich was a contender for the nomination, and Pence is already on the ticket, so they are both credible candidates, with few negatives.
Such victories are rare but not impossible. In 2010 Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski won an election to the U.S. Senate with a write-in campaign.
The RNC should also emphasize that voting for Republicans down the ticket for Congress becomes all the more necessary, as a check on Democratic power. The Republican slogan now should be: “Don't Give Clinton Control of Congress and the Supreme Court.”
In effect, the election would become Clinton vs. Pence. She will still win but the party will have dragged itself out of the mud and salvaged some dignity.
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