08-15-2016, 10:43 AM
Donald Trump pulling out of the Presidential election? It would be messy. The Republican Party would need to convene some assembly to select an alternative. Rifted as the Republican Party is now that would be difficult.
If I were a Republican I might want Mitt Romney, considering how well he did against an above-average incumbent President. Really, he did unusually well. But there are those running in 2016 (Walker, Huckabee, Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Cruz, Kasich)...
The problem with the Republican Party is what happens as a Party goes totalitarian -- it begins to become a collection of rivals who eventually go after each other once in power. Think of the Night of the Long Knives in Hitlerland in 1934 (of conservatives and of Nazis who wanted the socialist part of National Socialism)... and of the bloodletting among Communists after they seized power in central and Balkan Europe. Think of Rajk in Hungary, Patrascanu in Romania, Clementis in Czechoslovakia... Settling scores and eliminating rivals is just the way of gangsters who deal in black-market transactions (heroin, prostitution, loan-sharking, illicit gambling) or political gangsters like Nazis and Stalinists.
Think of it -- if you are a pro-Beijing or Titoite Communist and a Korean, are you safer in Seoul or in Pyongyang? You may have no chance of getting power in South Korea, but you are not going to be murdered.
Except this time the rifts have emerged among Republicans before they could win an election, and they will lose this election because of the backbiting. We are beginning to see some prominent Republicans decide that a Republican victory could be far more harmful than a Democratic victory.
To say that the Republican Party has gone totalitarian or even authoritarian may be hyperbole... but it may also be true. America with President Hillary Clinton may be far safer than America with (God forbid!) President Donald Trump.
If I were a Republican I might want Mitt Romney, considering how well he did against an above-average incumbent President. Really, he did unusually well. But there are those running in 2016 (Walker, Huckabee, Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Cruz, Kasich)...
The problem with the Republican Party is what happens as a Party goes totalitarian -- it begins to become a collection of rivals who eventually go after each other once in power. Think of the Night of the Long Knives in Hitlerland in 1934 (of conservatives and of Nazis who wanted the socialist part of National Socialism)... and of the bloodletting among Communists after they seized power in central and Balkan Europe. Think of Rajk in Hungary, Patrascanu in Romania, Clementis in Czechoslovakia... Settling scores and eliminating rivals is just the way of gangsters who deal in black-market transactions (heroin, prostitution, loan-sharking, illicit gambling) or political gangsters like Nazis and Stalinists.
Think of it -- if you are a pro-Beijing or Titoite Communist and a Korean, are you safer in Seoul or in Pyongyang? You may have no chance of getting power in South Korea, but you are not going to be murdered.
Except this time the rifts have emerged among Republicans before they could win an election, and they will lose this election because of the backbiting. We are beginning to see some prominent Republicans decide that a Republican victory could be far more harmful than a Democratic victory.
To say that the Republican Party has gone totalitarian or even authoritarian may be hyperbole... but it may also be true. America with President Hillary Clinton may be far safer than America with (God forbid!) President Donald Trump.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.