The sorry saga of the Republican Party’s fitful embrace of Donald Trump can best be told by borrowing an old template originally shaped by a faraway Protestant pastor who wanted to tell a very different story in a very different era.
Here’s our Tale of Trump, as shaped by that wise theologian:
First Trump villainized the Mexicans. (On day one, as he announced he was running for president, he called Mexicans who illegally enter the United States criminals and rapists.)
And the GOP’s famous leaders went along. Because the GOP leaders weren’t Mexicans and neither were their prime backers or big-money givers. Besides, fed-up voters of all persuasions were cheering Trump’s anti-Mexican tough talk.
Then Trump ridiculed the physically disabled. He sneeringly mocked the disability of a journalist who displeased him.
And the GOP’s famous leaders let it go. Because Trump’s soulless mockery still didn’t reach into their homes.
Then Trump began heaping praise upon Russia’s Vladimir Putin. And Trump railed against Muslim Americans — even the Gold Star Muslim American parents whose son gave his life to protect fellow soldiers.
And the GOP’s luminaries mostly looked the other way. Because Trump was winning their presidential primaries.
Then Trump repeatedly made news for insulting women he considered overweight or not pretty enough.
And GOP leaders got away with saying little and trying to just look the other way. Because, after all, Republican voters seemed entertained by Trump’s alternating fits of rage and outrage.
Pastor Niemoller’s lesson
If any of that seems familiar, it is because it is a modernization of a template crafted more than 70 years ago, in Germany, by the Rev. Martin Niemoller, who was an outspoken opponent of Nazism. We aren’t drawing any parallel to that evil era. But Niemoller’s poetic analysis left us a bracing reminder of the human condition: we tend to look the other way, even when we know something is wrong — as long as we can rationalize that it really isn’t about us.
But recently, we fortunately broke through the shackles of Pastor Niemoller’s template. We liberated ourselves from humanity’s worst instincts, perhaps, thanks to a politically stunning event — the leak of the Video Heard ‘Round the World.
By now, all the planet’s cognoscenti have heard the best and worst bits of the “Access Hollywood” outtakes from 2005: Trump is stupidly bragging that he gets away with all sorts of acts against women because he is “a star.”
Scores of prominent Republicans began whipping out press releases explaining they had mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, granddaughters — and that they could no longer justify voting for Trump to the females in their lives.
Now this: An article in the Christianity Today magazine, founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham, reported last week that “there has been little public movement among his leading evangelical supporters and detractors.” It went on to report: “One of the most notable reactions to Trump’s lewd comments came from Harvest Bible Chapel pastor James MacDonald, a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory council. … Over the weekend, MacDonald denounced Trump’s ‘misogynistic trash that reveals a man to be lecherous and worthless,’ according to email excerpts published with MacDonald’s permission by CT (Christianity Today) blogger Ed Stetzer.
” ‘I cannot and will not offer help to a man who believes this kind of talk a minor error,’ wrote MacDonald. He later noted, ‘No more defending Mr. Trump as simply foolish or loose lipped.’ ”
Trump’s obscene conduct has finally penetrated the homes and lives of the Republican leaders in ways that even the worst and most soulless of his past words and deeds apparently did not.
Martin Schram, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, is a veteran Washington journalist, author and TV documentary executive. E-mail at martin.schram@gmail.com.
