The reckoning with the presumptive GOP nominee has not come yet. It will not come until after this November’s presidential election.
In the unlikely event he wins, there may be hell to pay, not only by American Jewish voters, but by Israelis blamed by guilt-by-association for not voting for him by the notoriously unforgiving Donald.
In the much more likely event he loses in a landslide, there will be “stab in the back” recriminations, reminiscent of the German Right explaining their Kaiser’s loss in WWI. In fact, these recriminations have already begun in a preemptive fashion. See the story in the Forward about the vile attacks on journalist Julia Ioffe for her warts-and-all profile of Melania Trump, The Donald’s latest trophy wife.
These attacks, invoking all the standard Hitlerian and Holocaust denying slurs, come now from the Storm Front and the Neo-Nazi Right. I would bet the homestead they will also come more broadly from crushed, true-believing Trump voters after they need to find a scapegoat for how they were sold a bill-of-goods by this huckster for-all-seasons.
The GOP politicians who have already started to run away in droves from the “Never Trump” hashtag in order to avoid the wrath of his biker legions will only have to live with themselves and with their complicity in the grievous wounding, perhaps permanent destruction, of the party of Abraham Lincoln’s vision of liberty and Ronald Reagan’s vibrant conservatism.
American Jews—and not just widely pilloried “Republican neo-cons”—as well as Israelis will have more immediate and threatening problems. A time for reckoning is approaching—whether Trump wins or loses. This may be the inevitable result of the souring of the American Dream which has also been the American Jewish Dream and a safe haven for Israel.
I wish I had better tidings to give.
