Dog whistles and bullhorns

According to my favorite Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist, Jay Bookman, the difference between the dog whistle and the bullhorn in the Republican Party is Donald Trump.   The message is not that different, just the decibels of the delivery.   Here's Jay:

"Donald Trump is a symptom, not a cause, of the intellectual rot within the Republican Party.  Put another way, he's what the doctors would call an 'opportunistic infection,' a malady that couldn't take hold in a healthy host but that thrives in a host with an already weakened immune system.

"Marco Rubio, the great slight hope of the waning Republican establishment, offered confirmation of that diagnosis this week in his remarks to an American Legion group in New Hampshire.   'It's now abundantly clear,' Rubio said.  'Barack Obama has deliberately weakened America.'

"Think about that.  Rubio wasn't arguing that Obama's policies had been flawed, leaving the country weakened as a result.   He was claiming intent.  He was going to motive.  Rubio explicitly argued that the twice-elected president of the United States, our commander in chief, set out to deliberately weaken the country becasue he believes it is a force for evil in the world."

Bookman goes on to elaborate on how we've always had fringe people who say such things.

"Rubio, on the other hand, is a leading presidential candidate, someone viewed as the probable champion of his party's mainstream.   As his example demonstrates, once your party deems it acceptable to spread such nonsense by dog whistle, you have no standing to complain when someone like Trump barges in and does so via bullhorn."

Bookman then talks about how corrosive such allegations are to our system of democratic government, which is "founded on mutual trust;  without it, the Constitution is a dead letter."   Politicans will always disagree and fight.

"However, once one party succumbs to the notion that the other is guilty of treachery, of actively trying to undermine the whole country, as Rubio implies, the system cannot function.  In such an environment, the compromise that fuels a constitutional republic becomes redefined as collaboration with the enemy.   Faith in the system disappears;  radical responses are legitimized and gunmen start taking over government buildings.

"Once unleashed, such an attitude is hard to contain.  The old-school elements within the Republican Party that still appreciate the danger -- Jeb Bush, John Kasich, Lindsey Graham, etc. -- have lost the will or capability to corral it, and the likes of Rubio have surrendered to it.   If it is to be consigned once again to the fringes, where it belongs, the American voter will have to resoundingly reject it."

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I think Bookman has this exactly right.   This attitude was evident on the day Barack Obama took office in January 2009, when Mitch McConnell proclaimed on the Senate floor that the aim of the Republicans would be to see that Obama was a one-term president.    Where has a political party's senate leader so blatantly put partisan politics ahead of the basic functioning of our government and done so much harm to the American people in the process?   Ted Cruz would be even worse, having already taken pride in shutting down the government and threatening to do it again -- until his own party rose up against him.

Even McConnell was still open, occasionally, to compromise.   But the backlash against any softening of that by the Republicans led to the uncompromising crowd that swept into congress since then, demanding that McConnell and Boehner carry out that vendetta.

When they failed to get what they wanted, then we get the Republican base angry at the Republican establishment.    And then we get politicians like Trump and Cruz, willing to promise them that they will make things right.   That is what we're seeing in this GOP primary:   the revolt of the Republican base against the Republican establishment and their candidates.    Trump fans the flames, Cruz plays the game, and Rubio seems to feel he has no choice but to jump on the bandwagon.

Will the voters catch on -- and reject these snake oil salesmen?   If not, then the Republican voters will have been lied to once again by their own party, promising what cannot be delivered -- and in the process wrecking any functioning government.

Ralph 

PS:   A great wordsmith at play almost slips by in the third paragraph above:   "Marco Rubio, the great slight hope of the waning Republican establishment. . . "     A play on "the Great White Hope."