Scarcely making eye contact with the interviewer or the camera, most Republican leaders squirmed and mumbled and looked longingly for an exit. Sure, they said, he made a disgusting racist statement, but...but...but...I don't think Mr. Trump is a racist. And I do wish he would walk it back.
Among the more obnoxious clichés these days is the ever-present "walk it back" as a euphemism for a politician's trying to undo something stupid they said. Lately, we hear it a lot with reference to Donald Trump whose utterances are often not only ignorant or deceitful but entirely loathsome. He reached a new low with his effort to corrupt the judiciary by claiming that his own hatred for Mexicans should disqualify a judge hearing charges against him because the judge's parents had been born in Mexico. Sick. Truly sick.
Of course The Donald would never "walk back" such a monumentally corrupt sentiment (why? because he truly does not understand how evil it is), but let's just pretend for a moment that he would. The question is, where would it go if he did reel it back in?
Bingo! Right back into the cesspool of his own foul mind. Back to where it came from. Back to rejoin a limitless inventory of equally vile sentiments and impulses squirming like so many vipers in a pit, just awaiting what he deems a justifiable moment to let another one spring forth.
It's never a long wait. Today, he promises to pull up the drawbridge to forbid entry to--let's face it--brown-skinned Middle Easterners with funny-sounding names for themselves and that murderous deity they worship. White Christians who kill Americans by bombing federal buildings or shooting people in abortion clinics get a free pass, but let's be extra fearful of those smelly foreigners who aren't blond.
News flash for Republican leaders:
The only people who engage in racist behavior are...(wait for it)...racists! Your nominee to lead the United States of America is a racist (among other repulsive things). He is, without doubt, the loudest and most effective racist in the United States of America. When he failed to denounce the support of David Duke (head of the Ku Klux Klan), many in America didn't even know who David Duke was. But everyone knows who racist Donald Trump is.
And everyone in America knows which party he represents today. He represents you, even if he is a johnny-come-lately with no Republican credentials--just a clever showman who has hijacked the party for a bombastic ego trip around the country and perhaps the world. Is Lindsay Graham the only Republican of note who has the courage to state publicly what you all know is true?
Although we Americans have often tolerated and even supported injustice and terrible -isms that ruin the lives of our fellow Americans, I somehow trust that before November the vast majority of us--especially Republicans--will have come to understand what a genuinely abominable person Donald Trump is. His execrable impulses are rooted deep in his gut, deep in his instincts, deep in his self-serving, greedy, narcissistic ego and, many who consider him tolerable just because they dislike Hillary Clinton will finally realize that almost anyone they know is more worthy of the Oval Office than Donald Trump. They will come to realize that they would never forgive themselves for making him President of the United States of America.
Sadly, my friends in the outgunned Republican establishment know they will surely fail in their effort to "Stop Trump" at Philadelphia (City of brotherly love? Ha!). But in the end, the American electorate--including so many of their fellow Republican voters--will have their backs in the general election. They know this nation is better than him.