Regardless of whether Donald Trump wins or loses the 2016 Presidential election, the following will be true:
* Those who support Trump have proven to be the most gullible citizens of the United States, the sort of folks who can fall for the simplest of scams. To invoke a famous Washington Post controversy, they may not all be poor, and they may not all be uneducated, but they are most certainly easy to command. The word “Republican” should be henceforth regarded as a synonym for “sucker” or “chump.”
* Mainstream media entities will continue to avoid the journalistic responsibility of acknowledging the obvious gullibility of those who supported Trump, in the name of false balance and egalitarianism. The Fourth Estate has embraced the idea that tough-but-fair reporting on the willingness of many Americans to fall for a blatant political scam constitutes bias against those Americans. The morbidly funny thing is, no matter how much mainstream media entities bend over backwards to appease the gullible faction of America, that faction will still loathe mainstream media entities (because they have been taught to do so by the conservative-entertainment complex).
* Any Republican who chose not to support their party’s 2016 nominee must engage in some serious soul-searching as to why they would even want to remain with that party. After all, four years before Trump, the GOP nominated Mitt Romney–a man who, as governor of Massachusetts, made it quite clear that he viewed members of the LGBT community as negatively as Trump views Muslims and Mexicans. As Paul Krugman suggested earlier this year, in terms of dishonesty as well as discrimination, Romney wasn’t that much different from Trump.
“Never Trump” Republicans who are disgusted by the deviancy of the Donald should reflect upon the reality that the 2012 nominee also made clear his scorn for large segments of the American public…his contempt for climate science…his intolerance towards immigrants…and his racial rejection of President Obama. Trump’s presidential campaign is Romney’s 2012 campaign on performance-enhancing drugs, and the folks who reject Trump today should have rejected Romney four years ago.
* Elected officials who have positioned themselves as “reasonable” Republicans (think Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and Maine Senator Susan Collins) won’t be able to pull off that particular gambit for much longer (Illinois Senator Mark Kirk has already stopped bothering). As Salon’s Heather Digby Parton has suggested, the alt-right/white supremacist/deplorable types are on a quest to fully control the GOP–a quest likely to be achieved no matter what happens on November 8. It will not matter that Baker, Collins and others who have positioned themselves as “reasonable” Republicans are in nominally blue states (go ask former Delaware GOP Rep. Mike Castle if being in a blue state provided him any protection in 2010). The deplorables in those states will seek to remove them from office via right-wing primaries–and if Democrats win their seats in general elections, the deplorables will use their media outlets to gin up faux-outrage against, and thus real political problems for, those Democrats.
The GOP will only become more demented, more dishonest and more depraved whether Trump wins or loses. There is no known cure for this disease.
