Gerson has a column in today’s WaPo in which he laments the willingness of the vast majority of GOP leaders to support Trump in spite of his racism and innumerable other intellectual and moral failings. To him, this is the beginning of the end of the “Party of Lincoln.”
Gerson is an intelligent and eminently decent man, but I wish he’d get real on this issue. The GOP stopped being the “Party of Lincoln” when it turned its back on civil rights in exchange for the votes of bigots and electoral control of the Deep South in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Trump didn’t create that condition; he merely exposed it in a way that has made it impossible for anyone to ignore.
Or, to put it another way, you can no longer say with any credibility that Trump and his supporters are just a racist, swaggering, authoritarian caricature version of the GOP created by liberals–they are the GOP. How else could he get the nomination?
Yes, I know the truth hurts. If Gerson can’t stand it, he should go start a third party based on his ideals of freedom and limited government and see how many votes he gets.