Scott Brinton

Enough already with the GOP crazy talk

Posted

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of all the Republican crazy talk. Summer’s long over. The Iowa Caucuses are Feb. 1. It’s time for the GOP to get itself together and decide on an electable candidate with a sane platform.

Donald Trump was his usual bombastic self last week, proposing that the federal government form a “deportation force” to oust the 11.3 million undocumented immigrants now living in the U.S. and send them, we presume, back to where they came from, although Trump’s plan is fuzzy on such specifics. For all we know, his proposal might call for dumping them all –– excuse me, “humanely” dropping them off –– somewhere in a Mexican desert.

Who knows?

That, we presume, would be after he forces the Mexican government to build a massive wall along the border between the U.S. and Mexico. What this supposedly impenetrable wall would look like, who knows? Who would watch over it? Maintain it? Who knows? If Mexico were to build the wall (which it won’t), would it not want control over precisely how and where it would be built?

Two words for The Donald and his ludicrous wall plan: Dream on.

Trump is exploitative. He’s scapegoating illegal immigrants, blaming them for all that ails America. He’s stoking a jingoistic fire that has smoldered and occasionally flared for the longest time. He’s playing to people’s basest fears and prejudices. That his proposals are inane appears to make little to no difference. He remains the GOP frontrunner.

John Kasich, Ohio’s Republican governor, who is also running for the White House, is right –– enough is enough. It’s about time the GOP embraces a candidate with realistic goals and plans that demonstrate a basic human respect for all people. Otherwise Republicans risk handing the general election to Hillary Clinton, which, personally, I would have no problem with.

Like any American, though, I like a good battle. It’s no fun watching a candidate walk over an opponent –– and trust me when I say that in a general election, Clinton would slay the Trump dragon with relative ease. Republicans need to find someone who will put up a good fight based on a realistic platform, not one who trash-talks like a middle-school bully and whines like a 3-year-old when he doesn’t get his way.

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