The Republican Deep Bench... Led To Trumpy The Clown

Europeans are rightly freaked out by Trump's decision-- the day after he was officially named his party's nominee-- to publicly make statements to directly undermine NATO solidarity. Richard Sisk, writing for Military.com, pointed out that Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia "could be left to the mercies of Russia during a Donald Trump presidency [and] reacted with alarm and disbelief... 'This won't be good for NATO unity or the security situation,' said Ojars Kalnins, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Latvia's parliament. 'In principle, he is saying the U.S. will not fulfill its promises or obligations,' he said of Trump's plan to base U.S. support on how much alliance members spend on defense... The Baltic states and Poland have particular concerns on Russian President Vladimir Putin's intentions following his annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Ukraine. Putin angrily opposed NATO's expansion to include Poland and the Baltic states, and he has stepped up military exercises on their borders while stressing that he has an obligation to protect the large Russian ethnic minority in Latvia... At alliance headquarters in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg quickly rebutted Trump's remarks. Stoltenberg said he wanted to avoid commenting on a U.S. election but added, 'solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO. This is good for European security and good for U.S. security. We defend one another.'"

Republican politicians like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have tried to reassure the world that there's no need to worry and that wiser heads will prevail on Trump to forget all his dangerous, crackpot ideas. Feel reassured?

Eliot Weinberg, writing in this week's London Review of Books gave U.K. readers an exhaustive look at how it's come to this-- how such a patently unqualified and even deranged candidate could have won the Republican Party's nomination. He reminded his readers of Reince Priebus' tweet from last January, "It’s clear we’ve got the most well-qualified and diverse field of candidates from any party in history." Oops. Then he went through the whole horrid "deep bench"-- one mediocrity after another: Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum, Rick "niggerhead" Perry, Bobby Jindal (who bankrupted Louisiana by cutting wealthy people's taxes), Carly "30,000 job losses" Fiorina, Rand "Domino's Pizza had a bad crust" Paul, long-forgotten former governor of NY George Pataki, "someone named Jim Gilmore," Scott "son of a preacher man" Walker, Chris "the Tony Soprano of American politics" Christie, poor Jeb "Low Energy" Bush, Mike "I didn’t major in math" Huckabee, John "widely disliked phlegmatic and abusive" Kasich, Ben "fruit salad of life" Carson, Marco "penis size" Rubio, and Ted "Lucifer in the flesh" Cruz. How could even Trump not have beat them all?

[M]any Republicans, worried about their own re-election, have decided to stay away. Even Ohio governor John Kasich is avoiding the most important Republican event in his state since 1936. They are appalled that, given the ‘well-qualified and diverse field of candidates’, the voters have chosen a man of so little knowledge and such extremist views. Speakers, outside of Trump’s family, Dr Ben Carson and-- perhaps hoping for a miracle from his Lord-- Ted Cruz have been hard to find.

And he leaves his readers to ponder the idea of a Cleveland, thanks to Kasich and the GOP, "jumpy policemen awaiting streets full of demonstrators packing AR-15s."