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"Listen, Donald Trump is a serial philanderer, and he boasts about it ... talks about how great it is to commit adultery. How proud he is. Describes his battles with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam." - Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas
"A man utterly unfit for the position by temperament, values and policy preferences ... whose personal record of chicanery and wild rhetoric of bigotry, misogyny and misplaced belligerence are without parallel in the modern history of either major party." - Eliot A. Cohen, senior State Department official under George W. Bush
Despite this barrage of boos from fellow Republicans, rank-and-file party members flocked to Trump overwhelmingly, wiping out all other candidates. What does that say about rank-and-file Republicans? What does it say about other Americans who narrowly put Trump into the White House? It shows a glaring flaw in America.
Most baffling of all are white evangelicals who adore Trump. They oppose Jesus. Christ was a liberal who stood with underdogs, preaching aid the poor, heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the helpless. That fits the modern public safety net backed by Democrats. But white evangelicals mostly back Republicans who want to slash the safety net to give the rich a tax break. How unChristlike.
During a New York fundraiser in September 2016, Hillary Clinton blurted:
"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up."
The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart, in a column titled "The Basket of Deplorables is Overflowing," wrote: "Clinton was wrong: It's more than half."
It isn't unusual for a lone person to be repulsive. But when multitudes swarm behind the repulser, it's a weird phenomenon. That's an ugly flaw in America.
(Haught is editor emeritus of West Virginia's largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette-Mail, and a senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine. He has written 12 books and 150 magazine essays. As a blogger at a dozen websites, he has 1,200 essays online.)
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