Lindsey Graham faced up to the reality of Trump's victory over the GOP and urged Florida millionaires he met with just over a week ago to back the party's bizarre nominee. Then came the crazy reaction to Judge Curiel and ole Lindsey faced up to a different kind of reality-- a GOP Dunkirk this fall. While wimpy Republican senators like Little Marco Rubio, Kelly Ayotte and Susan Collins tepidly criticized Trump's overt racism and eagerness to mix his personal business into the presidential race, none of them said they would put the country first over their own tattered political party. They're all going to vote to saddle America with him-- despite what they know about him! Lindsey Graham-- hoping for an appointment as the token Republican in a Clinton cabinet-- did, though.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, another former primary rival of Mr. Trump’s, urged Republicans who have backed Mr. Trump to rescind their endorsements, citing the remarks about Judge Curiel and Mr. Trump’s expression of doubt on Sunday that a Muslim judge could remain neutral in the same lawsuit, given Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim noncitizens entering the country.“This is the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy,” Mr. Graham said. “If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it,” he added. “There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”It remains very unlikely that ambitious Republicans and those on the ballot this year will publicly break with Mr. Trump until it becomes politically advantageous for them. At the moment, Mr. Trump enjoys wide support from the sort of rank-and-file Republican voters whom elected officials are loath to antagonize.Mr. Rubio, who has said he would speak at the Republican convention and personally apologized to Mr. Trump for making jokes about the size of his anatomy during the primary, confirmed in a Florida television interview that he would still support Mr. Trump.
Florida Democrats are eager to tar Trump's supporters with everything Trump says. I reached Alina Valdes, the progressive Democrat running for the FL-25 seat occupied by open Trump-supporter Mario Diaz-Balart. "If it wasn't so pathetically true and dangerous," she said "I would find Herr Drumpf's attraction to low information voters comical or as Stephen Hawking, the theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge, stated during a speech in London recently, “a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.” Donald J. Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, subsequently said, “For a so-called genius, this was an epic fail. If Professor Hawking wants to do some damage, maybe he should try talking in English next time.” Without missing a beat, Hawking, whose mind is as sharp as a tack while living in a body ravaged by ALS, followed up with the statement, “Trump bad man. Real bad man.” Alina was just getting warmed up to the topic:
While this interaction is indeed humorous, it goes to show that the Republican party's endorsement of Trump as their nominee for President of the United States is tragically self-serving. By allowing their "lowest common denominator" followers to affect all reason and common sense, they are guilty of having the same beliefs as their presumptive leader. Most have already fallen in line tripping over each other to support Trump and in so doing, have lost all sense of what little respectability they had left. Marco Rubio has even humbly stated that he would be honored to speak at the convention on his behalf after spending months calling him out on his views and lack of any substantive policy. Mario Diaz-Balart, current Republican incumbent in the heavily Latino district of Florida CD-25 and the man I am challenging to flip this seat, has said that he would vote for the Republican nominee. Both being of Cuban-American decent and as such, Latinos, apparently do not find anything wrong with Donald's harsh words on Mexicans, women, and just about anything that is not white and male. They and many others are apparently more concerned about their political careers in their party and their donors that maintain them in power rather than the principles and tenets, the very Constitution they have sworn to defend.As my mother always used to say "Dime con quien tu andas y yo te digo quien tu eres," which translated roughly means "Show me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are." Never have these words been more true as they are with the Republican party 2016 and their presumptive nominee, Donald J. Trump. They have put their party and their careers above the country they have sworn to defend from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Never has a domestic threat been more real than someone named Donald J. Trump, who is one election away from holding one of the most powerful positions in the world...POTUS. May God help us all!!
Tim Canova, who doesn't even have an actual Republican opponent-- just Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who represents the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- is adamant about Trump's toxicity in South Florida politics. "Donald Trump’s incendiary message will only help boost turnout in the upcoming congressional elections," he told us this morning. "Here in South Florida, there is growing interest among voters of all ages to get involved in the political process to prevent Trump from winning. We can expect a higher turnout than usual even in our own primary election on August 30th." Alan Grayson, who will in all likelihood be running against Rubio in November-- where Trump at the top of the ticket will be a major issue-- told us today that "In 1970, when Nixon nominated G. Harold Carswell for the Supreme Court, Sen. Hruska said 'there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?' Well, with the Trump campaign today, the bigots, the xenophobes, the paranoid, the chauvinists, the vain, the self-absorbed-- they’re getting all the representation that they ever dreamed of."Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which was originally founded by Bernie, was the first member of Congress to endorse and campaign for Bernie. H'e as disgusted with Trump's racism as all normal people are. Yesterday he told us that "the trouble for the Republican Party isn't just that Trump is the nominee-- it's that Republican Party voters chose him from a list of 17 options. He is what they want the GOP to look, sound and act like from now on. Any candidate for any office who thinks he or she can run against Trump's 'style' and keep Republican voters on board with the usual laundry list of right-wing positions isn't paying attention. The party has permanently changed its center of gravity, and changes that big always carry a lot of collateral damage."On Tuesday, after the primary, Wendy Reed became the official candidate of the Democratic Party and will go up against Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in the Bakersfield/Lancaster-centered 23rd congressional district of California, a district the GOP would normally consider "safe." This year though, the district-- which boasts both a 36% Hispanic population and a surge in voter registration beyond what anyone can recall-- could well be in play. Wendy pointed out that "the anti-Trump and anti-McCarthy voter block is huge. Americans appear fed up with forked-tongue corporatists who offer no real leadership or solutions for our very real challenges."Good news! All of these #NeverTrump candidates can be found on the same page-- just click on the thermometer: