We begin today’s roundup with Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post who takes on Donald Trump’s “pitchfork populism”:
The blustery billionaire’s “us” is nowhere near a majority of the U.S. electorate, but it might be enough to win him the Republican nomination for president. And even if he falls short, the forces he has loosed will not easily be tamped down. [...]
Trump’s audience in Mount Pleasant appeared to be overwhelmingly white. If it mirrored his support base in the polls, it was also older and less educated than the Republican electorate as a whole. A vastly wealthy tycoon who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and lives in a Manhattan penthouse has somehow become the unlikely spokesman for a segment of voters who feel most threatened by what the nation has become. [...]
Trump gives unfiltered voice to the anger and frustration some Americans feel. When he says he refuses to be “politically correct,” what he means is that he rejects the traditional constraints of public discourse. He doesn’t chastise his supporters for racism, nativism or religious bigotry; instead, he validates such views, bringing them out of the closet where they had been hiding.
Paul Krugman at The New York Times writes about “empowering the ugliness”:
[A]long comes Donald Trump, saying bluntly the things establishment candidates try to convey in coded, deniable hints, and sounding as if he really means them. And he shoots to the top of the polls. Shocking, yes, but hardly surprising.
Just to be clear: In offering these explanations of the rise of Mr. Trump and Ms. Le Pen, I am not making excuses for what they say, which remains surpassingly ugly and very much at odds with the values of two great democratic nations.
What I am saying, however, is that this ugliness has been empowered by the very establishments that now act so horrified at the seemingly sudden turn of events. In Europe the problem is the arrogance and rigidity of elite figures who refuse to learn from economic failure; in the U.S. it’s the cynicism of Republicans who summoned up prejudice to support their electoral prospects. And now both are facing the monsters they helped create.
The Post-Star editorial board:
Donald Trump has stepped over the line that separates politics and morality, and that doesn’t happen very often. [...]
We as citizens need to face up to the enemy.
Right now, you can make a good case it is Donald Trump.
David Ignatius:
But the judgment of history should matter to other Republicans. Historians will look harshly on those who, for reasons of cowardice or opportunism, kept silent when Trump’s tirades put our constitutional values and the safety of Americans at risk — not to mention the political future of the GOP. [...]
How will history judge other prominent Republicans who have been onlookers and even cheerleaders as the Trump car wreck has ensued? Can Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) really continue to waffle on anti-Muslim statements? Is this former Supreme Court law clerk really so clueless about the Constitution? How about Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.)? Does he have the backbone to take on the demagogue? All we can say is that historical reputations will be made and lost over the next few weeks.
Jay Bookman at The Atlanta Journal Constitution:
37 percent of GOP voters say that after hearing the proposal, they are now more likely to vote for Trump; just 16 percent say it makes them less likely. And that show of support creates an interesting dynamic in next Tuesday’s GOP debate in Las Vegas.
So far, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina and John Kasich have joined Graham in strongly condemning Trump’s proposal, and again, that’s to be applauded. The problem is that among the five of them, they account for a combined 10 percent of the GOP electorate. They have neither the standing nor the heft to make their criticism stick. Nobody is going to listen to them, and the more strongly they condemn Trump, the more popular they are likely to make him.
On a final note, Catherine Rampell points out that Trump’s rhetoric is giving other GOP candidates a pass in the media for their reprehensible policy proposals:
Is there really such a difference between saying “Christians only” and “no Muslims”? At some point we’re splitting hairs.
Sure, Trump expanded this religious litmus test to all immigrants, rather than just those fleeing for their lives, but in so doing he merely took an existing, Republican-establishment-endorsed proposal and made it a little bigger and flashier. He gilded the gold-plated lily, as Trump is wont to do.
It’s not clear his rivals have a lot of moral high ground to stand on if their argument is essentially “vote for someone slightly less bigoted than that other really big bigot.”