History Will Remember

We will be continuing to note the latest amoral, craven, cowardly Republicans to succumb to neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump:

Two prominent GOP establishment congressmen — Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, who chairs the House Transportation Committee, and Jeff Miller of Florida, who chairs the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee — endorsed Trump on Thursday.

There are so many reasons to despise man- bat hybrid and Florida Republican Gov. Rick "Voldemort" Scott.  Now you can add this to the list:

“Donald Trump is going to be our nominee, and he is going to be on the ballot as the Republican candidate for President. The Republican leaders in Washington did not choose him, but the Republican voters across America did choose him. The voters have spoken.” 

There's a list of the dregs of American politics supporting Rump here.   We have to make sure these moral ciphers and cowards, and what they stood up for, are remembered.

Why?  Because remembering is the enemy of Rump and all the narcissists, demagogues and charlatans before him.  Our past forgetfulness as a nation allowed for them and Rump to come along, polluting political life and ripping at the social fabric of America.  As Charles Pierce says today in a very timely essay,

The 2016 presidential campaign—and the success of Donald Trump on the Republican side—has been a triumph of how easily memory can lose the struggle against forgetting and, therefore, how easily society can lose the struggle against power. There is so much that we have forgotten in this country. We've forgotten, over and over again, how easily we can be stampeded into action that is contrary to the national interest and to our own individual self-interest. We have forgotten McCarthy and Nixon. We have forgotten how easily we can be lied to. We have forgotten the U-2 incident and the Bay of Pigs and the sale of missiles to the mullahs. And along comes someone like Trump, and he tells us that forgetting is our actual power and that memory is the enemy. 

We believe (hope?) history will remember, mainly because it won't be written by puerile politicians or our ethics- free media* -- but, as a people, will we remember, this time?

* BONUS:  Wonkette decimates the Rump- curious wankers at Salon. Let's be sure to remember them, too.

The Trump "Pygmalion Project"

The New York Times editorial board expounds on the "Pygmalion project" to re-brand the odious neo- fascist demagogue Donald "Rump" Trump, led by his new campaign chief and despot hired gun Paul Manafort:

... Yet the Trump on the stump is the true man. However copiously applied, cosmetics cannot obscure his brutish agenda, nor the narcissism, capriciousness and most of all, the inexperience paired with intellectual laziness that would make him a disastrous president.

Come Wednesday, with Tuesday’s primaries safely out of the way, Mr. Manafort’s makeover efforts will enter a new dimension — Mr. Trump’s first foreign policy address. The campaign promises no less than “a clear, consistent long-term foreign policy for making America safe and prosperous.” That’s sure to be an interesting test, given that until now Mr. Trump has demonstrated limited knowledge of foreign trade policy, Middle East issues or geography. A sometime adviser, Roger Stone, said in an interview released Monday that the presidency “is show business” to Mr. Trump, who Mr. Stone said lacks the bandwidth to read a 40-page briefing book.

Whatever persona or good manners Mr. Trump chooses to display from now on, he can’t hide his unfitness for the presidency.

As we've said, history will not be kind to those who play along with Rump's ludicrous attempt at a makeover and choose to ignore the danger that he poses, simply for cynical, craven personal or political reasons.

BONUS:  Seth Meyers does a pretty creditable job satirizing this re-branding effort and the "low bar" Rump set that has many suckers in the media fawning over how Rump's tone was now becoming "more presidential:"

Remember

Today, in a double broadside, the editorial board of the once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle and columnist Dana Milbank provide loads of reminders why, in the face of an increasing number of Republicans (and media) cozying up to a "rebranding" neo- fascist bigot Donald "Rump" Trump, we need to "remember the real Donald Trump."

The editorial contains 25 (we counted) things to remember about Rump that demonstrate his manifest unfitness for the Presidency.  They forecast "multitudes of office- seekers and sycophants to follow Chris Christie's craven path to believing, or pretending to believe, in a presidential Trump," and conclude with this:

“Winning is the antidote to a lot of things,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said earlier this year. As Mr. Trump marches toward 1,237 delegates, others will emulate that amoral embrace.

So remember. Winning is not an antidote to bigotry, violence, ignorance, insults and lies.

In the spirit of Passover, Milbank offers his "10 plagues of Trump," recounting the most memorable of Rump's outrages, and notes that he and a colleague "are compiling a comprehensive list of Trumpisms."  He invites us to email our favorites to posttrumpisms@gmail.com.

He concludes,

But even if we only had these Ten Plagues of Trump, it would be enough — dayenu, as we say during Passover — to make Trump’s rebranding impossible.

Rump's rebranding may or may not be impossible, but there are plenty of suckers in the media, and craven shysters and amoral Republican Party hacks like Priebus, Christie, Michael Steele, and Rump's chief strategist Paul Manafort that will jump on his bandwagon as it rolls toward and through Cleveland.  They should be remembered, too, and we're going to do our small part to see that history won't forget those who lacked the moral courage to stand up to this appalling demagogue.