President Donald Trump has done just about all the damage he can inflict on this country.
But it’s Republicans such as Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho and Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington who are now inflaming wounds that will fester long after Trump is sent back to where he came from.
Trump is a racist. That is an incontrovertible fact.
Trump engaged in birtherism against his predecessor, President Barack Obama. He launched his presidential campaign by declaring Mexican immigrants as “rapists.” He said he could not get a fair hearing before U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel because the Chicago-born jurist was a “Mexican.”
Trump said there were “good people” among the white supremacists who participated in the deadly march at Charlottesville, Va. He asked why the U.S was taking so many people from the “shithole countries” of Africa.
But the smoking gun arrived last weekend when he invited four Democratic House members who are women of color — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
Only Omar, who came from Somalia at age 10, is an immigrant.
“I believe that what this president has done to our culture, to our civic discourse ... you cannot unring these bells and you cannot unsay what he has said, and you cannot change that he has now in a very short time made it seem normal for schoolboy taunts and obvious lies to be spun out in a constant stream,” conservative columnist George Will recently told the New York Times Book Review’s podcast. “I think this will do more lasting damage than Richard Nixon’s surreptitious burglaries did.”
But Trump can not normalize this racist infection to our “more perfect union” on his own.
Only his fellow Republicans can do that.
For the sake of argument, imagine if congressional Republicans had risen up last week and chastised their own president.
Here’s what it would have sounded like:
l “There is no room in America for racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, xenophobia and hate. ...” — Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas.
l “... The president’s remarks to my colleagues across the aisle are inappropriate and do not reflect American values. ... ”— Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind.
l “I agree with a lot of what the president does from a policy standpoint, from tax reform, immigration, when it comes to border security. ... What I disagree with the president is his tone. I’m a Ronald Reagan Republican and that’s the area I grew up in.” — Rep. Brian Fizpatrick, R-Penn.
l “Today’s resolution was targeted at the specific words that frankly are not acceptable from a leader in any workplace large or small. If we’re going to bring civility back to the center of our politics, we must speak out against inflammatory rhetoric from anyone in any party anytime it happens. ...” — Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich.
But they were the only four House Republicans to join Democrats in condemning Trump’s remarks. That left 187, including McMorris Rodgers and Simpson, to explain themselves in a wave of whataboutism and “let’s move on.”
Said Simpson: “ ... The uneven application of the Democratic outrage machine proves that this is yet another disingenuous political stunt.
“I don’t agree with the president’s words and I do wish he would choose his more carefully. However, I also completely disagree with the constant focus on arguments between politicians and the media’s obsession with fanning the flames of disagreement. ...”
Said McMorris Rodgers: “The president’s tweets over the weekend were wrong and distract from the discourse we’re having in this country about socialism. ...
“At the same time, House Democrats have wasted their first year in the majority on nonbinding resolutions that do nothing and bills that are political statements rather than sincere legislation.”
There is no moral equivalence between a president enhancing his own reelection prospects through the politics of division and a speaker of the House calling him on it.
Most Republicans know better than this.
It’s easy to believe Simpson and McMorris Rodgers do as well.
But Republicans fear the wrath of Trump — or the wrath of Trump’s base. They fear being “primaried.” So they look the other way. They minimize. They engage in whataboutism.
If any Republicans have license to confront that base, it is these two.
Simpson already has been primaried — and he handily dispatched the Club for Growth-backed Bryan Smith in 2014.
McMorris Rodgers runs in a top two primary — a system that gives pragmatic moderates an edge over hyperpartisans. The last candidate to give McMorris Rodgers any reason for alarm was not a right-wing zealot, but Democrat Lisa Brown of Spokane.
But neither risks anything by blithely going along with Trump and the House GOP’s talking points. That is the path toward spending another two or four or six years in Washington, D.C.
The only question is: When that service ends and they inevitably come home, will they even recognize the country they’ve helped to create? — M.T.
