Former Senator John Danforth (R-Missouri) is going around telling his fellow Republicans that they have to distance themselves from Donald Trump or the party is going to suffer the consequences. When told about that I started looking around and found that he was on Lawrence O'Donnell's program with the same message - I hadn't before thought of a bass voice bleating, but that's what Danforth is doing, bleating like a scared lamb. Danforth is saying that now is the time for all decent Republicans to come to the aid of his party, only as O'Donnell pointed out, by a very large percent, Republicans, this far into the criminally insane Trump regime, support Donald Trump.
In the course of the interview Danforth managed to blame Democrats, Trumps opponents, the American people in general for what his party has produced, though as O'Donnel also pointed out, the American People, in general, DON'T support Trump or his hateful policies. I will remind you, Senator John Danforth, as O'Donnell pointed out, is an ordained Episcopal Priest as well as a lawyer, a Princeton-Yale product. He is also the man who, in his great judgement and gravitas, did so much to put Clarence Thomas, with whom he had a professional relationship, on the Supreme Court. His behavior, especially around the smearing of Anita Hill, during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings convinced me he was a fraud, both in terms of integrity and wisdom and, frankly, honesty. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him from where I am sitting as I type this.
If John Danforth wants to find someone to blame for Donald Trump he could find one of them every time he looks in the mirror. As a resident of Maine, a state which produced several of the same species, the "moderate" Republican, the "reasonable, principled, 'good'" Republican, they're as part of the corruption that the Trump regime is enacting as anyone else. They're just better in the up-market media. During his appearance on O'Donnell's show, Danforth managed in his list of those to blame for Trump, even the opponents of inequality, using the Republican buzz-words "identity politics" in assigning blame to the very people who opposed Trump and against whom Trump has campaigned. Clearly, that's common ground between Trump and Senator John Danforth as, indeed, it is for most of the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, Republican governors, Republican legislators and on-air talking heads. The man is a more genteel, more covert specimen of exactly what he now decries from the editorial page of the New York Times and in front of TV cameras and radio mics.
"Identity politics" is when non-white people are accorded consideration (at least). When politics considers only the concerns of white males, it's what the Founding Fathers intended. Which, actually, it is. But that's another problem.
ReplyDeleteI hate to say it but after the past week and month, if I saw John C. Danforth in person I don't think I could keep from punching him in the face. The genteel, respectable ones are the ones who most enable the worst, as we can read every time Clarence Thomas acts on the Supreme Court.
DeleteI haven't had any use for Danforth since the Thomas hearings.
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