The Daily Escape:
Lighthouse in Husavik, Iceland – photo by Milonade. Husavik is the center of whale watching in Iceland.
Lindsay Graham has never been a favorite of Wrongo’s. Often, he gets the same treatment here as does John McCain, and for similar reasons. But the 62-year old who replaced Strom Thurmond in the Senate in 2003 hit a new low in an interview on BBC World Service radio show, Hard Talk. Graham was with McCain attending an economic conference in Lake Como, Italy, when he sat down with the BBC’s Steven Sacker for an interview. (transcription and emphasis by Wrongo)
At 4:08 into the interview, Sacker asks Graham:
Isn’t that the point that he (Trump) right now looks like a president who is polarizing the US in a way that we have not seen before?
Graham:
I would say that the country has been polarized for quite a while, just like your country. Brexit is a result of disenchantment with globalization. There would be no Donald Trump if President Obama had brought us together.
There, right there. Its Obama’s fault that Trump won the Republican nomination for president, because Obama didn’t bring us together. Graham implies that Republicans are uniters, but the Kenyan socialist just wouldn’t help them out with that.
Wait – the Republican Party didn’t want Trump, but Obama nominated him?
To say Obama created Trump is a poor projection. The GOP created Trump. Trump’s political success is the logical result of decades of efforts by the GOP to discredit government, and more recently, by their acceptance of virulent, and in some cases, racially tinged opposition to Obama.
The GOP wanted Obama to fail. Time’s Michael Grunwald reported on the Republican plot to obstruct Obama even before he even took office. He uncovered secret meetings led by then-House GOP whip Eric Cantor, and then-Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell in 2009 where they laid out their “no-honeymoon” strategy of all-out resistance to the President-elect.
Remember that was a time of national economic emergency.
The Republican’s active resistance also tried to demonize Obama as a “king”, or a kind of Hitler. They fought against most of his policies. They shut down the government. Policy differences are understandable, and expected. What was unexpected and unacceptable was the unified GOP effort to make Obama fail as president.
The big Republican move to elect an anti-immigrant nationalist was fueled by the Tea Party surge in 2010, which was also in opposition to Obama. And it isn’t just the Tea Party. Republicans have long-struggled with various anti-establishment, ultra-conservative insurgencies seeking to upend the party.
Trump wasn’t the first to tap into the anger of disaffected white voters. Pat Buchanan challenged Bush in the 1992 primaries and again in 1996, when he led a populist revolt he described as “peasants with pitchforks.” Buchanan ran on a platform similar to that of Trump: anti-free trade, tough on immigration and focused on the plight of the white working-class.
So, Republicans own Trump now and forever, despite what Sen. Graham wants people to think. Graham’s contention about Obama is irrelevant to today’s situation, where Trump has failed to even try to unite America on any issue. And specifically, he failed to call out the evil posed by fringe Nazi groups, or show us how a president should deal with a national disaster.
When will the lying stop?
Since this is the first column since Saturday, here is a pro-labor song from the Rolling Stones, “Salt of the Earth”, written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, the closing track on the 1968 album’ “Beggars Banquet”:
Sample lyrics:
Raise your glass to the hard working people
Lets drink to the uncounted heads
Lets think of the wavering millions
who need leaders but get gamblers instead
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or polio
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter: They brought us Donald Trump.
Whether Lindsay Graham or someone else is the worst, it is easy to document the efforts made by Republicans to ensure that Obama failed. I don’t have the transcripts, but I do remember shoveling snow in the winter of 2008-9 and there were many reports in the nightly news (NPR) that as early as the first 45 days of Obama’s presidency, that Republicans would not support measures like Cap and Trade that had formerly been supported as market based solutions to air pollution. There were also endless complaints from Republican house members about the measures taken (started under Bush II) to stabilize the financial markets.
As a once regular Republican voter I found the entire matter distressing. Now – Republicans can only admit the truth by confessing that they are the problem – they lie continually and have no ideas for government.