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August 18, 2016

Cynics like me are diffident about invoking morality to justify our opinions. Yet in my view, this presidential election is entirely about morality: or, to put it another way, about the foundation of a democratic political system which is civic morality.

With some honorable exceptions, center-right, conservative-GOP elites in this country have decided that regaining power from the Democrats after eight years of Obama is worth electing a sociopath bordering on a psychopath, whom they did nothing effective to prevent from becoming their nominee, from being elected president.

Arguably, the Democrats after eight years of GOP rule in 2008 sold the gullible American public a bill of goods to elect Obama. The difference is that, unlike with Trump today, they did not appeal to the worst instincts in human nature—in fact, quite the contrary.

Would the Democrats go so far to elect a dangerous demagogue of their own? That’s debatable, especially if you are a cynic, but the fact also is that they don’t have to because they have power and haven’t nominated such a demagogue this time. Hillary Clinton, despite all her flaws, actually believes politically in what she believes—and has shown no signs that she is willing to sell out the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to aggrandize her ego to get elected.

In 1884, liberal Republicans were derided as “Mugwumps”—with their “mugs” on one side of the fence, and their “wumps” on the other—because they broke with their own party to vote for Democrat Grover Cleveland, a man of considerable moral probity though limited political imagination. They did so to reject Republican James G. Blaine—the Democrats called him “ James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine”—who was a talented but unusually unscrupulous politician. The big issues of that presidential election—civil service reform and tariffs—may seem mostly arcane from our point of view. But the breaking point for the Mugwumps was when Blaine’s supporters defamed Catholics by raising the libelous battle cry against the Democrats and Cleveland: “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”

A demagogue like Blaine, albeit much less dangerous than Trump, was too much for the Mugwumps.

Today, we desperately need before it is too late for more Mugwumps—not less—to morally repudiate Trump and Trumpism.

Need I add that those who, for whatever reasons, are willing to elect Trump at the expense of our Constitution and Republic, might also look the other way if and when, as president, he decided to sell out Israel and Jews?

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