Yes, rats jump off a sinking ship, they say. But it looks here like the political low-lifes are rushing to jump ON what they think will be the winning ship: Donald Trump for president.
He has been endorsed by: Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK), Gov. Paul LePage (R-ME), former Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and former Grand Dragon of the KKK and one-time presidential candidate David Duke, plus a slew of white supremacy groups.
Know who these people are?
Chris Christie has a long list of shady deals as governor of New Jersey: (1) When he became governor, he cancelled construction on a long overdue, much needed tunnel into Manhattan and diverted the money to fill holes in his budget due to his ballyhooed tax cuts and make him look fiscally responsible. (2) During his years as governor, the state's credit rating has been lowered eight times. (3) There was some shifty thing about funding for the state pension plan being diverted for other uses. (4) The whole Bridgegate/Port Authority corruption that his closest aides carried out that no one thinks he was innocent in. (5) He sold out NJ taxpayers' interests when he made a deal with Exxon to settle for peanuts against the $8.9 billion dollars that it actually will cost to clean up the toxic waste damage caused by Exxon. Someone who can pull off these deals is not going to give away a shockingly improbable endorsement for nothing. Endorsing Trump, just weeks after he is on film saying Trump is not qualified to be president, is making Christie look like a fool -- and therefore has to be worth a lot. So you can bet these two deal-makers struck a deal that gave Christie what he wanted -- most likely Attorney General.
Sarah Palin has become a caricature of herself and, if possible, seems even loonier than when she was a VP candidate. Even Fox News parted ways with her as a commentator. Two comments dominated news of her endorsement speech: (1) its incoherence; some called it a word salad. (2) her attention-grabbing jacket, which looked like "a disco porcupine." She gets news attention now from things like her family being involved in a drunken brawl at a party they crashed and daughter Bristol, who once had a job preaching against unwed teen pregnancy, now pregnant herself for the second time from a second man she is not married to.
Paul LePage is the irrascible, outrageous, current Republican governor of Maine. He makes headlines for things like racist slurs (claiming drug dealers come into Maine to get their white girls pregnant), encouraging people to shoot drug dealers, suggesting they should bring back the guillotine, making sexist remarks like saying women can't be trusted with money, and wanting to publish names and addresses of people on welfare. Lawmakers are trying to impeach him for abuse of power for threatening to withhold funds from a school to influence their choice of superintendent. Just one week before he endorsed Trump, LePage told fellow Republican governors that Trump's nomination would harm the party and that they should distance themselves from him. Then one week later, he reversed himself, telling a radio host: "I was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular, so I think I should support him since we're one of the same cloth."
Jan Brewer was Republican governor of Arizona from 2009 to 2015. She gained notoriety when she signed a very repressive anti-immigrant law that made it a crime to be in Arizona without carrying registration documents. It also authorized strong measures against hiring, sheltering, or transporting illegal aliens. Brewer believed in strict enforcement of borders, including the building of a fence; and she diverted federal money intended for education to border security. She made national news from her meeting with President Obama where a press photograph showed her shaking her finger in his face. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Brewer as one of the Worst Governors in America.
Jefferson Beauregard Sessions has been a federal prosecutor and Attorney General of Alabama. He has been in the U.S. Senate for 20 years, ranked by the National Journal as the fifth most conservative senator and voting reliably to block any Obama legislation and both of his Supreme Court nominees. He is especially supportive of Trump's remarks on immigration. Of course, he was one of the first to proclaim that Obama should not nominate a replacement for Justice Scalia but "let the American people speak" in the November election. Ronald Reagan nominated him for a U.S. District Court, but he was not confirmed, probably due to his blatant racist attitudes. Several Justice Department lawyers testified that he had called the NAACP and the ACLU "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" organizations that "forced civil rights down the throats of people." He admitted in the hearing that he may have said that, but that "I am often loose with my tongue . . . but I meant no harm by it." The committee voted 10-8 against the nomination. Sessions is now on the Judiciary Committee that rejected his nomination 28 years ago.
David Duke is the best known white nationalist, antisemitic, conspiracy theorist. He was once Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He has run unsuccessfully for governor of Louisiana, and for senator and president of the U.S. He is also a felon, having pleaded guilty to defrauding supporters in fund raising. After initial reports of his endorsing Trump, he later
clarified his remark, saying that, although Trump is the best of the candidates, Trump's support for Israel is a deal-breaker for him. Nevetheless,
he did tell his radio listeners that voting for anyone besides Donald
Trump "is really treason to your heritage."
So this is the crop of Trump endorsers who have made the news so far. Of course there will be others; and maybe some of them will be, shall we say, somewhat more admirable.
Ralph
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