disintegrate: to break or decompose into constituent elements, parts, or small particles
mong the many things we should thank Barack Obama for is just how much his working in the White’s House—not as a servant or employee of a white president, but as president himself—has helped lead to an ugly disintegration of what has become an ugly Republican Party, a disintegration that is now happening before our very eyes.
The Obama-related dissolution and demoralization began in 2009 with the rise of an angry Tea Party, where nuttiness became normalness. Where—even putting aside the occasional and unseemly displays of racism that came with our first African-American president—questioning Mr. Obama’s devotion to his country and his chosen faith became as natural as questioning his birthplace. And the most prominent birther, of course, was Donald J. Trump, a man now the front-runner and face of his party, positioned to win a number of primaries tomorrow. Thus, even though it was quite unintentional, even though it wasn’t part of a clever national Democratic Party strategy to undermine the integrity of the GOP, Barack Hussein Obama is, ironically, cracking up The Party of Lincoln.
Donald Trump has divided conservatives from the Republican establishment. He has divided conservatives from other conservatives. He has divided reactionary evangelicals from other reactionary evangelicals. He has divided the right-wing donor class from working-class Republicans. He has challenged the integrity of the Republican Party’s official public relations arm, known as Fox “News,” relentlessly and classlessly attacking one of it most popular propagandists, Megyn Kelly. He has made two Tea Party extremists, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz—both of whom believe the government should force a rapist-impregnated woman to bear her rapist’s child, and both of whom represent his toughest conservative competition at this point—seem a more rational choice for the Republican nomination than Trump. And he now has prominent Republicans openly saying they will not vote for him in the general election.
Perhaps most important, in terms of non-Fox, right-wing media coverage, Trump has now turned his most prominent cheerleader, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, into a critic. Look at this header from today’s HuffPo:
I heard the very conservative Scarborough talk this morning. And I found his comments amazing. After months of rooting for Trump, defending him, giving him advice on the air, Scarborough is now all of a sudden surprised that Trump would do something so dumb as not denounce David Duke and the KKK. After years of Trump’s racist birtherism; after 
months of Trump’s assaults on Hispanic immigrants and Muslims, including women and children war refugees; after Trump’s hate-filled attacks on journalists and his most recent suggestion (which he repeated this morning) that, as president, he would make war on a free press and “open up our libel laws” so politicians like him could sue for “lots of money”; after all that and much, much more, it finally dawns on Joe Scarborough that Trump may not be qualified for president?
That tells you what you need to know about the condition of the Republican Party.
Trump’s awkward refusal, on ABC’s This Week, to disavow both David Duke and the KKK shouldn’t have surprised anyone, including Joe Scarborough and the Morning Joe crew. He has, without much pushback from the Republican establishment, openly courted bigots from the very beginning. That’s why he has been very popular among white supremacists and other haters, like Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
But Trump, who knows very little about a lot of things, thought he could get away with not rejecting the support of open racists on a prominent Sunday political show because, as he has said before, he really believes he is invincible. He believes he can disavow Duke on one 
day, then pretend not to know who he is on another day, followed by a phony explanation as to why he didn’t openly disavow him or the KKK on ABC. He can do all that, he believes, because his bigoted supporters will get the message: “Yeah, I had to eventually sort of disavow the racists, but my ambiguity should tell you something.”
Apparently it does. Judging by his rally at Radford University in Virginia today, he hasn’t lost an inch of ground. Thousands came out to wildly, and I mean wildly, cheer him and his tiresome bigotry. “We’ve gotta unify our country,” he told his audience, after loudly and rudely ordering a few protesters from the premises. That coming from perhaps the most purposely divisive figure in modern American political history.
Joe Scarborough, born and raised in the South, tried to tell his Morning Joe viewers today that the South has changed. That Trump’s attempt to appeal to racists in tomorrow’s mostly southern primaries won’t earn him one vote. Oddly, Scarborough also said that Trump will win most of the races tomorrow. In other words, according to Scarborough, Trump’s shameless and clumsy appeal to racism on Sunday won’t win him any votes in the South but als
o won’t cost him any votes.
If that is true, if Trump wins big tomorrow and becomes very difficult to stop on his way to the nomination, that tells you something not just about the South, but about the Republican Party. The GOP is splintering and will soon no longer be a national party at all, but one that will have to deal with a shrinking group of anxious and angry white constituents who give the party most of its energy, but who just can’t cope with Barack Obama and the browning of America and the loss of white privilege that he so impressively represents.
Thank you, Mr. President.
The Erstwhile Conservative: A Blog of Repentance 
Herb Van Fleet
/ February 29, 2016Here’s an article from the Washington Post, “I just binge-read eight books by Donald Trump. Here’s what I learned.” It’s a mind-blowing overview of Trump’s personality in life, business, and politics. I think the last paragraph in this article is one of those “be careful what you wish for” alerts that all right leaning voters should read, and read, and read, and . . .
“. . . judging from these books, I’m not sure how badly he really wants the presidency. To win it — yes, I think he’d love to close that deal and, of course, write another book about it. But to actually be president, day to day? Trump has always been about the next big thing, whether the next deal, spouse or fight. “The same assets that excite me in the chase, often, once they are acquired, leave me bored,” he writes. “For me, you see, the important thing is the getting, not the having.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2015/07/30/i-just-binge-read-eight-books-by-donald-trump-heres-what-i-learned/?postshare=1651456773172564&tid=ss_fb
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Jim Wheeler
/ March 1, 2016Herb, this Washington Post summary of Donald Trump is nothing short of, ahem, INCREDIBLY insightful. Too bad that few of the mesmerized hoi polloi will never read it, let alone understand it. Barnum was right, and so was L. Frank Baum in his depiction of the Wizard of Oz.
We are, I submit, seeing the demise of the political party system. It is being, ah, trumped, by social media, talking heads, and sound bites. Talk about the Art of the Deal. It is manipulation as old as money and never more powerful.
Only yesterday I received an unsolicited phone call offering to solve my credit-card debt. Press 1 to speak to an associate. Suckership is apparently thriving. Oh Brave New World!
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Herb Van Fleet
/ March 1, 2016Jim, in lieu of Barnum and Baum, I think I’ll go with Lewis Carroll. To wit:
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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R. Duane Graham
/ March 2, 2016I confess I started out thinking the same thing about him. And it may, indeed, have begun that way. But if you have followed his rise closely, as I have, there became a point where he really started believing that he could actually become president. And the scary part of all this to me is that there are some otherwise smart people who are seriously arguing that he could actually beat Hillary Clinton in November. As I have told others, there is some level of union support for him, a fact that I find utterly disturbing, but seems to indicate that he has broader appeal than just to crazy Republicans. But I refuse to believe, because it would be so contrary to the nature of the national electorate, that a majority of voters will put him in control of the military or the nuclear arsenal. Ain’t gonna happen, thank Allah.
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Herb Van Fleet
/ March 2, 2016Someone should make a movie. I’d call it “Dr. Strangetrump, or how I learned to stop worrying and love The Donald.” The cast would be an assortment of characters from the mind of Lewis Carroll. Oh, the absurdity of it all.
It should be somewhat clear that Trump’s appeal is not coming, generally at least, from the educated, the intellectuals, or the elite. His followers consist of the bigots and those with bumper sticker mentality. What’s concerning is that there are so many of them! They’re like the “Walking Dead,” whose energy has been generated by the life force of a Donald Trump. There are millions of them and they can’t be killed. But they can vote.
It’s enough to make one want to drink. Speaking of which . . .
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Anonymous
/ February 29, 2016Yes thank you Mr. President!!
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