The iCondemn® for Republicans
by Tom Sullivan
Donald Trump’s brand of 21st-century McCarthyism rolls on unchecked by a Republican party fearful of taking him on, and giving tacit approval through its silence.
When challenged, Trump doubles down, citing vague sources he fails to name. He has a “pretty good source.” He is “hearing … from other people” something no one else has heard. Trump got “hundreds of calls” from people who imagined they saw what he imagined he saw. James Downie writes at the Washington Post:
It’s all eerily similar to a claim made by a U.S. senator in Wheeling, W.Va., 65 years ago: “I have here a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party.” Sen. Joe McCarthy never revealed where he got that list; the number changed from 205 all the way down to seven, and he never provided any concrete evidence. But, as Trump knows, McCarthy’s lack of evidence was no hindrance to tapping into the fears of a portion of the U.S. electorate. In those days, communists were coming for you; now, Muslims and immigrants are, and in both cases, the U.S. government won’t stop them. The message remains: Be afraid. The more that people buy into the message, the worse off America is.
Dana Milbank has no sympathy for Republican cowardice in not calling down Trump:
Trump gets ever more base in his bigotry — and yet, with few and intermittent exceptions, rival candidates, party leaders and GOP lawmakers decline to call him out. So he continues to rise, benefiting from tacit acceptance of his intolerance.
Or more than tacit. Carson, taking questions from reporters Monday afternoon, said that he, too, had seen nonexistent “newsreels” of the supposed cheering by New Jersey Muslims on 9/11. (His spokesman said later that Carson had been mistaken.)
Did they both see the Clearwater Virgin in window stains, too?
Milbank continues, “Yet no matter how far Trump goes, most of his competitors stay silent, or mild, or deferential.”
You know, it’s too bad there are not Republican Muslims cheering Trump from New Jersey rooftops. Maybe then the GOP leadership would find the cojones to demand someone in their party condemn Trump — the way conservatives demand random Muslims publicly condemn every act of terrorism by a lunatic fringe that claims Islam as justification. We could even make it easy. Perhaps with a Republican version of the iCondemn® app for Muslims:
With the iCondemn®, Muslims can say “not in my name” at the speed of life!™ And non-Muslims no longer need to wonder whether 1.6 billion Muslims around the world feel the guilt and sincerely apologize for that latest reprehensible crime some idiot carried out while shouting “Allahu Akbar!”
The iCondemn® for Republicans would make it easy and quick for Republicans to apologize for every offensive, nativist comment from Trump or any other conservative spokesperson, as well as for any act of domestic terrorism. The iCondemn® for Republicans would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that they are not Trump coddlers just giving lip service to American principles. Hell, Trump probably would put his name on the thing.