"What does not kill me, makes me stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche
(By Hartmann, Basel. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
The GOP's reckoning
by Tom Sullivan
"What does not kill me, makes me stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche
(By Hartmann, Basel. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)
Much digital ink has been spread about how Republicans created Donald Trump and now are paying the price for it. But Trump is not the only nemesis they helped create.
First, writing yesterday from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Charlie Pierce spoke of the Super Tuesday reckoning facing the Republican party:
The facts are as stark as the slopes of Lookout Mountain in the early morning light. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, especially by those of us who see the Republicans as having been cruising for this particular bruising ever since it so greedily ate the monkeybrains in the 1980s. But, from the people who make their living at being Republicans, we are seeing the kind of existential panic that you only see once or twice in a century. It's Watership Down, with Super PACs and Mitch McConnell.
Indeed, this morning's online headline at the Washington Post described it as a "nightmarish Super Tuesday" for the GOP establishment. Trump won seven of the states in play. Hillary Clinton also won seven Super Tuesday states.
Paul Krugman yesterday tweeted a Storify by hilzoy explaining "how cynical know-nothingism led to Trump." Having spent decades and billions to systematically inoculate their base against the truth and to undermine confidence in government, politics and politicians, the GOP and its allies now find themselves choking on the fallout from their own weapons of mass deception. Hilzoy explains that GOP supporters' capacity to trust anyone – including the GOP – has been destroyed.
@hilzoy And by destroying trust in everyone who might speak against him, party has destroyed all paths back to sanity.
— hilzoy (@hilzoy) March 1, 2016
In engineering this autoimmune disease, the Machiavellis of the vast right-wing conspiracy forgot their Nietzsche. Twenty-five years of near-constant political assault was not potent enough to destroy Hillary Clinton. Now, not only is the Republican Party facing a Trump of its own creation, but a stronger Hillary Clinton as well.
Clinton spoke last month with Anderson Cooper about the years of attacks:
"It is a brutal experience and when it first started happening to me ... I was just stunned. I could not understand how they got away with it.
"So now that I've been through this for so many years," the former first lady continued, "my understanding of the political tactics that the other side uses is pretty well versed. They play to keep. They play to destroy.
"I know I have to keep defending against them," Clinton added. "But I'm the one who has the experience to do that.
Like a punching clown, you can knock Hillary Clinton down, but she just will not stay down. Which is why they fear her.