Dear Republican leaders: It’s not too late to dump Trump

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Tuesday August 02, 2016 · 3:54 AM PDT

2016/08/02 · 03:54

is the title of this column by Michael Gerson in today’s Washington Post, and I strongly urge people to read it.

Gerson begins by talking about sacred space, and the picture at the top of the column is of the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, on which we see four men, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Louis Jackson, the day before King’s assassination. Gerson writes

On this spot a familiar voice was stilled, but also somehow magnified, becoming part of our collective conscience.

In talking further, he offers the following paragraph, which I think is worth remembering:

Then came a movement of conscience in which being a community organizer could demand the courage of a soldier and get your head cracked open. A movement opposed by domestic terrorists who bombed homes and churches, and murdered children. (Should we refer to them as “radical Christian terrorists”?)

Note that parenthetical remark, because it is relevant to our consideration of Donald Trump.

It goes further. And there is a further key remark to the introductory portion of this column:

Leaders such as King believed that history has an arc, determined by the appeal of freedom and the Author of freedom. And their vision of human rights became an inseparable part of the American story: a nation that declared high ideals, then was judged by them, and now is motivated by them to expand the circle of inclusion, protection and promise.

By now we should have a sense of where Gerson, a former speech writer for George W.Bush, is going with this column.

This column is Gerson's response to the brouhaha over the remarks first of Khizr Khan, and what has happened since Donald Trump weighed in.

The beginning and the end of one paragraph are key to what Gerson wants to say. Here’s the beginning:

My point here is not that Trump is a classless, egotistical sadist — though that case is strong. It is that Trump’s view of nationalism is based on culture, ethnicity and exclusion.

Note that Gerson has no trouble labeling Trump rather forcefully as sadistic, seeming to get enjoyment from whatever pain or discomfort or embarrassment he can inflict upon others, as we see by his tweets and the labels he attempts to verbally affix to opponents, starting with “low energy Jeb.”

But it is for him more a question of the vision of American which Trump propounds, and the final sentence of that paragraph connects with the 2nd sentence in the blockquote above:

Trump is not merely indifferent to the language of racial and religious inclusion; he is actively hostile to the premise.

I cannot go through the entire column, as I have already indicated. But I will offer a few shorter snips to show what Gerson offers.

In examining why some Republicans still support Trump, even after the latest episodes over the weekend, he writes of them

whatever their motivations, they are encouraging an alternate and degraded version of the American story

a DEGRADED version — or if you prefer, a total abandonment of the American ideal, one ironically well presented in the best sense by the Khans and their affirmation of the best of American Exceptionalism.

As Gerson writes,

In fact, the United States is the model for the world when it comes to integrating Muslims and people of other faiths into a pluralistic society. Rather than recognizing this achievement, Trump would undo it and foster the kind of conflict he warns against.

As one of Eastern European Jewish background, two of whose grandparents were immigrants, I am part of that “model for the world” and as I have noted in the past our extended family includes a black-white marriage, Latinos who did not move to the United States but were included when the US border expanded, someone with at least half Native American background, as well as someone (my spouse) who is a descendant of someone on the Mayflower, a general in the Revolutionary War, and someone else who derives from Tories who went to Prince Edward Island to get away from that very revolution. I also have taught and come to love many students whose parents were immigrants or who they themselves were born in other nations, and are now part of the wonderful fabric of this nation.

Gerson has a challenge for those Republicans who still support Trump. He writes

Those who support Trump are setting the Republican Party at odds with the American story told by Lincoln and King: a nationalism defined by striving toward unifying ideals of freedom and human dignity.

As I have taught my students, we can see that striving through the series of Amendments to the Constitution which abolished chattel slavery, expanded our notion of citizenship, and greatly expanded the electoral franchise. That is part of the notion of American Exceptionalism.

Gerson begins with King, and circles back to King to end his column. Before I quote the end of the column, I again remind you of Gerson’s previous employment. That may be relevant to the reach of this well-written column, although when you read it, especially its end, I hope you will agree with me that the words themselves carry great moral weight.

Here is that end:

In his last public address, the night before his murder, King mused on mortality, saying that he would die “happy” and “not fearing any man” because he was sure of his life’s mission, which included “standing up for the best in the American dream.”

Which Republican leaders can now rest in that confidence? It is not too late to repudiate.

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