The Great Big WTF Show That Was The 2020 Republican National Convention
In 2004 I wondered if Republicans were out of their freaking minds. George Bush II was a disaster of a president. Maybe not in comparison to what we have now, but definitely by that decades standards. How bad was he? My mother was a devout Republican, and had been a campaign worker for Ronald Reagan. There is even a picture of her with Reagan. She had supported both Bush's, both father and son, as well as Dole. It only took the first term of Bush II's presidency to turn her against the Republicans. I had spent more than a decade trying to turn her, and she had refused to listen. It was Bush's incompetence that turned her, as well as a lot of her Republican friends.
I was sure Bush II was destined to be a one term president. The entire Democratic party, as well as many independents, were looking to the 2004 election as revenge for the 2000 election. Where, if you recall, the Republicans successfully prevented the hand count of 70,000 defective ballots that the machines couldn't read, arguing it couldn't be done by the deadline to submit the results. The real reason the Republicans stopped the hand count was the slim chance Gore could pick up enough votes to win the state and therefore the l election. Half the country believed the Republicans had stolen the election, and were outraged at Bush months before he was sworn in.
Bush's handling if the aftermath of 9/11 briefly gave him record approval ratings. But the war in Iraq and other missteps erased all of it. By 2004 most Americans were calling Bush the worst president in history. And that included Donald Trump himself. The Republicans tried to downplay Bush's failings by spinning the war in Iraq as a good decision, despite the revelation that Sadam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction. They had removed a dangerous dictator who regularly killed his own people and threatened the rest of the Middle East. Something Americans were finding harder to buy as more and more soldiers came back in body bags, and the war continued well after Sadam was captured and executed.
On the Democratic ticket was decorated war hero senator John Kerry. A better Democrat candidate could not be found. A record number of citizens registered specifically to vote Bush out of office. In the national election itself Kerry broke state records for the most votes cast for a Democratic candidate. Unfortunately Bush broke the record for most votes received by anyone in a national election, giving him a nationwide slim victory over Kerry. Somehow the Republicans motivated their base to show up at the polls and give Bush a second term.
In the months leading up to the election, Rush Limbaugh as much as admitted Bush had a terrible first term, and pleaded to his listeners to hold their noses and vote for Bush in order to prevent the Democrats from retaking the Whitehouse. It wasn't just his strategy, but that of the entire Republican party. Bush may be terrible, but a Democrat president will be much worse. Here was one of the worst presidents to ever take office, and Republicans and conservative independents showed up in record numbers to reelect him, just to keep the opposition from winning.
Democrats weren't like that then. They still aren't like that. They will very easily vote for a Republican if they believe he is a better candidate. A lot of Democrats voted for Ronald Reagan. During the first National election I could vote in, fellow Democrats who told me they were voting for Dukakis in the primaries, admitted they would be voting for vice president Bush in the national election no matter who won the Democratic ticket. Full disclosure, I voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election instead of Al Gore, who I felt was too conservative and may as well have been the Republican candidate. In the 2016 election, many Democrats protest voted for independents or even Trump. Some Democrats bought that he would actually help the country better than Hillary, others simply to send a message to the DNC that they didn't approve of their candidate. Democrats don't hold there noses and elect anyone they don't want in office. They may go as far as vote for a presidential candidate they aren't very enthusiastic about to keep a Republican candidate they don't like out of office. But they draw the line at getting a candidate they don't like elected just because he is a Democrat.
George Bush II's second term was worse than the first. Millions of Republicans who had done what their party had asked, and gave Bush a second term, decided they had enough. For some Katrina was the final straw. For others it was the financial meltdown which was mostly the result of Bush deregulating Wall Street. Others had their own reasons, finding something either Bush or Cheney had done indefensible. It was only when Bush hit his Lame Duck period that the Republican establishment finally turned against him. They even tried to talk him out of attending the 2008 convention, eventually scheduling his speech during an hour the major networks weren't broadcasting. They didn't want him campaigning for McCain. They essentially asked him to leave their party alone. They were no longer defending him, and even publicly agreeing how bad he was. All too little and too late for the fed up members of the party who left because they could no longer stomach the Bush II administration, and blamed their party for enabling him.
Even those that remained party members through the worst of the Bush II administration looked upon it as a huge mistake. When Jeb Bush made his presidential bid, by and large Republicans rejected him, mostly because they held him guilty as the Governor of Florida during the 2000 election of putting his brother in the oval office.
By 2008 the Republican Party was as good as dead. A vast number of members abandoned the party, and independents no longer trusted them. That was when they embraced the Tea Party, looking for the movement to rebuild the numbers their party had lost. Establishment GOP members were not thrilled with the Tea Party politicians who gradually replaced them in the House and Senate. But these politicians were willing to call themselves Republicans, willing to fight tooth and nail for Republican causes, and got tens of millions of angry Americans to to vote for the Republican ticket. They allowed the Republican Party to survive and thrive. And all the GOP needed to do was play lip service to the radical Tea Party platforms. Little did they realize this alliance would leave the door open for Donald Trump to steal both the Tea and Republican Parties.
The Tea Party relied on angry Americans. Some angry about the economy. Some angry about immigrants. Maybe a few still pissed off that the Confederacy lost the Civil War. A lot of them were riled up about paying taxes. The Republicans themselves had exploited anger to obtain votes, mostly through ultra religious who were angry that abortions were legal and Howard Stern still wasn't in jail. And through the NRA that convinced its members that liberal politicians were constantly trying to take away their guns.
The merger of the Tea Party and Republicans created one big unhappy family, which conservatives outlets like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh fed a daily dose of things to be outraged at about the opposing party, to keep the family unhappy. They even continued doing this when the Republicans were fully in charge and Democrats had no power whatsoever. Take, for instance, the claim that the liberals are trying to take away Christmas, based mostly on Starbucks putting out cups that said "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas".
The War on Christmas is a complete fantasy. Charlie Brown's Christmas still airs every December going on 55 years now. Santa still shows up at the end of the M*A*C*Y's Thanksgiving Parade. They still light up the Rockefeller Tree, while millions of young pine trees continue to be slaughtered so we may bring them in our homes and decorate them, then toss them to the curb come January. Christmas is way too popular, way too profitable, and way too constitutionally protected to be taken away. Yet many angry Christians continue to believe it is under threat thanks to the conservative media.
Aside from the War on Christmas, right wing media has found a multitude of other topics designed to enrage their audience and portray the Democrats as the enemy of America. While the Republicans and Tea Party benefitted from right wing media, they also distanced themselves from it. Let the Bill O'Reilly's, the Ann Coulter's and Rush Limbaugh's spread their propaganda, conspiracy theories and more often than not lies about the Democrats. When it turns out not to be true, the Republican politicians don't have to answer for it, because it wasn't them who said it. Never the less, you have millions angry enough to turn out at the polls and vote against the Democrats while your reputation stays intact. How could the politics of anger possibly backfire?
Enter Donald J Trump. A blowhard, celebrity wannabe, businessman with a sketchy track record, self claimed but yet unproven billionaire, accused con artist, and a Democrat. That is until he realized Democratic voters would never nominate him for dog catcher, let alone president. That's when he suddenly changed parties. But was definitely not the ultra conservative he portrays himself to be today if he was twice a member of the Democratic party.
He sowed the seeds for his presidential run by claiming to be a birther, the label given to those conspiracy theorists who believe Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, but in Kenya, and therefore disqualified to be president. A theory easily proven untrue by government records, including Obama's own birth certificate. Even after those documents were made public, Trump continued to promote the birther theory. When he announced he was running for president, his speech began with the claim that most of the Mexicans entering our country were rapists and murderers. Once again proven false with arrest records showing most of the Mexicans entering our country, whether as legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, on a work Visa or as tourist, commit no violent crimes at all.
This strategy was central to Trump's campaign, and why he so easily won the primaries. He repeated the right wing propaganda from right wing media. His opponents didn't. Why? Because most of it wasn't true. In fact, his Republican opponents in the primaries called him out on his statement against Mexican immigrants. The problem was that the right wing PR machine that had been enraging conservatives with propaganda and outright lies since the Morton Downey Jr. Show in the 80s, had conditioned their audience not to believe the "liberal media". Only they were telling you the truth. The other news sources were the liars. By 2016 the audience of right wing media typically refused to fact check what they were told, and turned a deaf ear to anyone, even a close family member, who tried to prove what they heard was a falsehood.
Republicans had the opportunity to denounce right wing media, but didn't. By remaining silent they endorsed it as factual. But they rarely repeated the rhetoric of right wing media, because most of it was untrue, and repeating it as fact would turn off independent voters. To win elections they would still need to appeal to the middle. As for the angry conservatives who believed right wing media, they felt Republican politicians were too afraid to say what they knew was the truth. Which was why they immediately fell for Trump. For them, he was the first politician in their lifetimes who was not afraid to speak the truth.
The irony being that Trump is a habitual liar. Even the first sentence he spoke upon announcing he was running in the 2016 election was a lie, an obvious one. Looking out in the crowd, he claimed there had to be thousands of people who came to see his speech. There were less than 100, more than half of which were members of the press, and the rest were provided by a job agency who offered $50 for anyone willing to wear a Trump t-shirt and cheer. Even if that agency had found more than 40 people willing to attend, the legal occupancy in that section of the building was less than 500, and even if regulations were ignored, could not possibly jam thousands in even if they stood on each other's shoulders. Video taken at the event clearly shows a very modest crowd.
Trump told the angry mobs everything they feared was true. The Mexicans were sending over their criminals to steal your jobs and rape your wives. The politically correct liberals wanted to do away with Christmas. Global warming was a hoax designed to destroy the American economy. Mainstream media spread lies and buried the truth. Obama was not an American. Trump didn't care that he was spreading obviously lies, because he knew the base he was stealing from the Tea Party and Republicans would never fact check him. By being the only national candidate to speak their truth, he became their political messiah. And would be the only politician capable and willing to lift them out of the dark age they were obviously in, and make America great again.
The establishment Republicans weren't buying any of this. Trump was, up until a couple of years earlier, a Democrat, who boasted being close friends with the Clintons. Most of his views back then were liberal. During the primary he claimed to be anti-immigration, yet had Mexican and South American immigrants ( at least some who turned out to be undocumented ) working at his North American resorts. He claimed to be pro-American on trade, but bought cheaper Chinese steel for his buildings instead of American steel. He was no Republican. He was just pretending to be one for the sake of winning the nomination. The Tea Party candidates were even more repulsed by Trump. For the first time they had the numbers for a Tea Party candidate to win the primaries. Ted Cruz was getting the votes most of the establishment Republicans weren't. To Cruz, Trump had stolen the Tea Party base they had spent the past decade building, and once in office would ignore the Tea Party platform.
Every Republican candidate denounced Trump as unfit to be president, and would be a threat to our nation if elected. Of course, once each was forced out of the race, they realized it was time to brown nose the candidate who was most likely going to win the ticket. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who just two weeks earlier denounced Trump as dangerous, was endorsing Trump at a press conference, with a look on his face that can be best described as a sad puppy that just realized it sold it's soul to Satan. Christie would soon be followed by other Republican politicians who "flip-flopped" on Trump being unfit to be president, and gave him their endorsement. Cruz would, at the least, refuse to endorse Trump at the convention, and urge voters to vote their conscience. Cruz would flip -flop when Trump won the election and publicly support him ever since, but was still banned from speaking at this year's convention.
There were a couple of attempts by Republicans to prevent Trump from winning the presidency. When the primaries became a three way race, they tried to convince either Cruz or Kasich to drop out and endorse the other. This would allow one of them to solidify the anti-Trump vote and win the remaining races, preventing Trump from having enough delegates to win the ticket. Which would mean a contested convention where the Republicans could potentially select a candidate other than Trump. But neither Kasich nor Cruz would agree to drop out.
The other attempt came after Trump won the nomination, with the announcement that there would be a major independent conservative candidate entering the race. Most likely Mitt Romney, who at the time had started publicly bashing Trump as unfit and lacking the temperament to be president. While it would seem all the conservative candidate could do is split the vote allowing the Democrats to win, it was a lot more than that. If the candidate just campaigned in five battleground states and won them, then no one would have enough electoral votes to win the election. Which would mean the top three candidates would then go to Congress, who would vote among them for the next president. And since Congress at the time was mostly Republican, whichever one of the three they wanted. It was a brilliant strategy. No matter who was ahead in the polls, neither Trump nor Hillary would win. A conservative, who would most certainly be Republican, would win.
But what the Republicans needed to pull this off, was some guts. It wouldn't just be the nation accusing the Republicans of once again stealing a national election, it would be Trump's entire base. Who they would need two years later for the midterm. Would they forgive the Republicans? Would Donald Trump forgive them, or would he take his base away and form the Trump Party?
It was a meeting with Trump where he promised to follow the Republican agenda that convinced the RNC to go all in and support him. He may have faked his way onto the ticket, but as long as he agreed to pass all Republican bills, nominate their choices for Supreme Court, and basically act like a Republican for the next 4-8 years, then they were willing to give him the seal of approval. And with that the rest of the Republican critics fell in line. Immediately after that meeting, the conservatives saying they were backing an independent threw their full support for Trump instead, and James Comey announced Hillary Clinton was once again under criminal investigation for her emails, dropping her poll numbers. The final piece that assured Trumps victory in the election, what appeared to be tens of thousands of Democrats in key battleground states crossing party lines and voting for Trump instead. They too were angry, and fell for Trump's spiel.
I am convinced the Republicans had one last trick up their sleeve. There was little doubt Trump was a disaster. However, the only reason we were aware of it was through numerous leaks to the press. All of those leaks Republicans working at the Whitehouse who were credible enough sources for the likes of the New York Times and Washington Post to print the leaks. Republicans were actively sabotaging Trump. Then Comey, who broke all protocol with his announcement of investigating Hillary creating an October surprise that gave Trump his victory, began an investigation against the administration for possible collusion with Russia during the election. Even after Comey was fired by Trump, the Republicans, who still controlled Congress, launched the Mueller investigation. It wasn't the Democrats hunting witches. They didn't have the numbers to do anything. it was the Republicans.
While an impeachment and removal would be devastating for Trump, it would be good for the Republicans. Not just removing an unstable president who was turning independent voters against the Republicans, but installing Pence mid-term, given him two years to win over the American public, and the legal ability to run in the next two elections as incumbent as he hadn't served a full term.
So what happened? Clearly there were grounds to use the Mueller report for impeachment of abuse of power. More to the point, what of the phone call to the president of the Ukraine which came immediately after the Mueller report fizzled out? There were definitely grounds for impeachment on that one. And clearly the Republicans were still sabotaging Trump as the whistleblower would have to be Republican, and everyone that put Trump up to the scheme was Republican.
Instead all but Mitt Romney cemented themselves as enablers, not just refusing to look at any evidence against Trump, or vote to convict, but refusing to even admonish him, and continued to come to his defense no matter what misdeeds he was guilty of.
There are two possibilities here. One, that the politicians of the Republican Party, along with the Tea Party, are all the unwilling hostages of Trump. He controls the base of both, and with one tweet can end their political careers. Either you are 100% loyal to Trump, or he will have his supporters vote for your rival in the next primary. So out of fear of the angry mob they created, they kowtow to Trump. Had his base turned against him in the Russia probe, then so too would the rest of the party. But he convinced them it was all a hoax. Because by this time everything he said they believed was the truth.
The other possibility, Republicans are too conditioned to win every battle. They have convinced themselves the Democrats are not just the opposition party, but the enemy of the entire country. They are at war with the Democrats, and will fight them tooth and nail on every front, even if the fight is futile. Take for example the conformation of Brett Cavanaugh. They could have simply withdrawn his nomination and found another judge who didn't have a sketchy background, and still have one of their own on the Supreme Court. But instead they fought to have him confirmed, because if his nomination was withdrawn, it would be a victory for the Democrats. It didn't seem to matter to them that by dismissing the women accusing Cavanaugh as either mistaken or lying that they were alienating themselves against women voters, they felt obligated to win this battle. The Republicans may be fighting to defend Trump simply because they can't allow the Democrats to have any win. This seems to be the case for Mitch McConnell, a critic of Trump during the primaries who is now his biggest supporter.
Whatever the reason, there is no possible good outcome. Most likely Trump will lose the next election. I can't imagine the Republicans being able to convince anyone outside of Trump's base to hold their nose and vote for him just to keep a Democrat out of the oval office. Bush II may have been a disaster, but he was a likable disaster who believed in the values of the party. If there is a groundswell to remove Trump from office, it most certainly will spread to the congressional elections as voters see the Republican Party as Trump's enabler and protector.
But let's say enough Americans are satisfied with Trump and he manages to stay in office for another four years. Can the Republicans hope for any improvement? Or will he continue to infuriate Americans, including the next generation of voters who will be old enough to vote by 2024. And what happens if, like with Bush II, the second term is worse than the first? A big possibility as Trump is no longer listening to his advisers and is emboldened to break laws he didn't in the first few years of his term after surviving an impeachment. He also will be held responsible for the economy after the pandemic should it turn out he isn't the economic genius he kept promoting himself as and can't lead us out of the recession. The Republicans are looking at another potential party destroying politician, who unlike Bush II will not just go away quietly, and will insist to be allowed center stage at the 2024 Republican Convention.
Even the best possible outcome would be distasteful for Republicans. Lets suppose Trump gets four more years, during which COVID-19 is eradicated, the economy rebounds, and we enter an age of unprecedented peace. A second term which is an amazing success. All of which Trump will take credit for, giving zero credit to all those working behind the scenes to clean up his mistakes and undo any of his damage. Exactly how would that make the Republican establishment feel, knowing it was them who saved the country, and the one guy responsible for almost ruining it gets all the credit for the save. That they spent eight years course correcting Trump and supporting every single mistake he made and unpopular policy he implemented, and he will leave office bosting how he is the greatest president ever.
No matter when Trump leaves office, the Republicans have to face the same challenge they did when Bush left. They have to find a way of distancing their party from an unpopular president. This proved an almost impossible task with Bush. With Trump, beyond impossible. During his first term he gave Republican politicians no option but to publicly defend him. Those who publicly disagreed with one of his policies quickly stepped back their criticism. Defending Trump on impeachment, even seemingly refusing to allow any evidence or witnesses during the Senate trial, has made all but Mitt Romney culpable of his entire presidency, even if they secretly didn't support his more controversial policies. In short, voters will hold all Republicans just as responsible for Trump as if they were Trump himself.
And Trump may not even allow the Republicans to distance themselves if he is in office for a second term. I don't see him agreeing to a token speech at the next convention during an hour the networks aren't covering as Bush did. Like everything else, Trump is going to want the convention to be all about him and not the next candidate. Furthermore, he is very likely to select his successor himself. Most likely Donald Trump jr., who he will instruct his base to elect in the next primary.
This is the hole Republicans have dug themselves in. Had they upheld the constitution and removed Trump from office during the impeachment, their Trump nightmare would have been over, and they would have had time for Pence to win the country back. Something he could have easily have done during the Coronavirus pandemic. The nation rallying behind their president during a national crisis the way they rallied behind Bush in the days following 9/11. ( Well, provided Pence listened to the advice of doctors from the start, had a national strategy in place, and didn't tell his base COVID-19 was harmless. ) Pence could have been a contender in the 2020 election, probably winning it, and Trumpism would be erased from the GOP. But instead Trump is their candidate, and unless he can rebuild his approval rating in record time, it looks like he may bring the entire party down with him.
So what is this rant of mine leading up to? The Republican National Convention. Which should be called the Trump Party National Convention, because it was proof positive that both the Republican Party and Tea Party are both dead and replaced with this atrocity of a political party that is all about appeasing Donald Trump. People who should know better who are willing to stand before a national audience and blatantly lie in order to convince Americans that Trump is the greatest president this nation ever had, and electing Joe Biden will trigger the Apocalypse. Lies that are so easily fact checked, or are simply evidently untrue because we lived through the truth. The equivalent of me standing in front of a crowd and announcing the sky is red when they can look up and see it is blue. Politicians who can't see past this election, that they themselves need to run for re-election again after this and forevermore will be identified as Trump supporters.
They said the RNC doesn't have a platform. It does. The platform is "All Hail Donald Trump!" They won't just lie and grovel for Trump. They are willing to lay down their lives for him. The final night they crowded in on the Whitehouse lawn for his 70 minute acceptance speech with little concern of the possibility of spreading the Coronavirus among them, just to give their leader the visuals he needed to pass the lie that the pandemic is at an end, thanks to him of course. And while I am mentioning the Whitehouse, no one in the Trump Party seemed to care that holding the event there was a violation of the Hatch Act. Even though it had been brought up weeks earlier that the Hatch Act made it illegal for the President to hold the convention at the Whitehouse, he ignored that law with the confidence that his party would allow him to break any law he wanted. He ignored the law and made his speech at the Whitehouse, the one where he proclaimed himself "the law and order president".
Supporters downplayed this violation, ( which is actually impeachable, but we now know not to bother, ) by saying because of the Coronavirus, Trump had nowhere else to go. Really? The man who owns Trump Tower, Maralago, and countless resorts, golf courses and properties across the country had nowhere else to go? The guy who mocks Biden for not leaving his basement during the pandemic suddenly can't leave the Whitehouse?
Perhaps the most interesting thing I took away from this convention was that the Republican..... I mean Trump Party... has no campaign strategy against Biden. It is clear that they had been counting on Bernie Sanders to win the nomination as their rants against Biden warn of him bringing his socialist agenda to America. Biden won the nomination on a platform that he wasn't a socialist, nor does he have any record of ever supporting Socialism in the past. They are attacking Biden with the ammunition they prepared for Sanders. Is it any wonder why Trump tried to get the president of the Ukraine to announce a criminal investigation against Biden? It probably would have been enough to spook Democrats off of voting for Biden in the primary and allowing Sanders to win the nomination. Trump's entire strategy is scaring them of a pending socialist nightmare should the Democrats win, and he is doing it against the wrong candidate.
The message of Trump and his henchmen ( which is what I am calling the other politicians in the Trump Party as that is what they reduced themselves to, ) was that no matter how bad you think things are going now, it will be a far bigger nightmare under Biden. And to shore their argument up, lies. Lies so mind numbing dumb that I can't believe any sane person would attempt to tell them.
They said Biden wants to defund the police. Yet every interview he has done so far he has said he doesn't want the police defunded. Meanwhile, Trump is currently defunding the police in New York and other sanctuary cities, and has boasted on his own Twitter feed about doing it.
They said Biden supports the vandals and looters in the recent police misconduct protest, and in addition accused the Black Lives Matter movement of committing those crimes. While violence has broken out during many of the protests, no one from the Black Lives Matter movement have been arrested, charged or witnessed in any way committing any crime other than breaking curfew. Nor is there any record of Biden ever saying he supported any of the violence. Meanwhile, when protesters armed with assault rifles showed up at the Michigan Capitol building demanding the stay at home orders for the pandemic be revoked, Trump tweeted support for their actions and encourage other Americans to do the same.
One unbelievable lie after another. Rudolph Giuliani, who I promise was once well loved and respected in New York City, went on a rant about how Democratic politicians are preventing police from arresting anyone and are allowing crime to rise, then lied about his own record, claiming Mayor de Blasio has allowed the crime rate to soar higher than it was during his own term as mayor. Actually, the current crime wave hitting the city is lower than the safest day during Giuliani's administration. And anyone watching the local news in NYC knows that the police are arresting people every day, including protesters.
Oh, and let's not forget the Trump Party accusing the Democrats of instigating the Cancel Culture when Trump himself along with his conservative allies demanded TBS cancel Samantha Bee's show after she called Ivanka a "feckless c***". Or that this is ( or was ) the party that had the Dixie Chicks banned from most country radio stations for criticizing Bush II, around the same time they had Bill Maher's show called Politically Incorrect cancelled for criticizing American servicemen. Conservatives are just as guilty of being part of the cancel culture, and everyone knows it.
The shameful display of deliberate lies was more proof that this was truly Trump's party, which he had changed for the worse. Not that politicians never lied. They were good at lying. Emphasis on the word "good". When they did lie, there was always a sprinkle of truth. Trump changed that with blatant lies, one after another. Lies his people initially defended as "alternative facts". This convention was filled with alternative facts, and the henchmen ( and henchwomen ) telling them did so with no shame.
I watched that convention, and kept thinking the same thing. Are they all out of their freaking minds? Sure Donald Trump's base is conditioned to believe these lies as the truth. But his base was already going to vote for him. The rest of America, including the independents and Republicans still on the fence about reelecting Trump, are not going to buy this. A lot of the lies don't even need to be fact checked for them to realize they are lies. This convention may just be enough to have them decide not to vote for Trump.
What is left to be seen is what happens on election day. It is still a couple of months away, which is enough time for Biden to do something that will turn off voters, or for Trump to actually do something that wins over Americans, or for the Trump Party to actually come up with a decent platform that will give voters a good reason to hold their noses and vote Republican. But as it stands, if record numbers of voters turn out to reelect this president for a second term, I will once again be questioning the collective sanity of this country. But win or lose, we are looking at what most likely will be the final nail in the coffin of the GOP. A sad end to the party of what really was our greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.
