Robert Kagan, a well-known neocon, recently argued “Trump is the GOP’s Frankenstein monster. Now he’s strong enough to destroy the party.”
Kagan reamed establishment Republicans: “Trump is no fluke. Nor is he hijacking the Republican Party or the conservative movement. He is [the] party’s Frankenstein’s monster, brought to life by the party, fed by the party and now made strong enough to destroy its maker.”
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
In 2016, the Grand Old Party brought forth a monster in a political experiment that went awfully wrong.
Behold the Birth of Trumpenstein!
Ecce Trumpenstein stampeding the GOP!
In Mary Shelley’s 1823 book Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) , the nameless monster is brought to life by his creator in a grotesque medical experiment. The monster is ugly and without feeling and sympathy. The monster learned to hate and be angry at everyone. In his hateful rage, the monster killed.
If Kagan is to be believed, the GOP’s Trumpenstein is not much better.
Kagan says Trumpenstein gestated in the GOP’s womb of “wild obstructionism, persistent calls for nullification of Supreme Court decisions, insistence that compromise was betrayal, internal coups against party leaders” and thrived in an ideological amniotic sac in which “government, institutions, political traditions, party leadership and even parties themselves were things to be overthrown, evaded, ignored, insulted and laughed at.”
Trumpenstein, like Frankenstein, is ugly and without feeling and sympathy.
Trumpenstein also learned to hate and be angry at everyone just like Frankenstein.
In his hateful rage, the GOP monster kills, at least he thinks he can with impunity.
In January Trump said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”
Trumpenstein would do more if elected president. He would “beat China all the time. All the time.” He will “force Mexico” to build a wall along the 2000-mile U.S.-Mexican border. He would ban all Muslims from entering the US but would gladly get rid of them. He would wipe out the family of anyone suspected of terrorism. He said, “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.” He sounds just like African thugtators.
America’s international partners say Trump reminds them of the proverbial “ugly American” (the loud, arrogant, demeaning, thoughtless and ignorant American travelling abroad insulting his hosts).
Trump says, “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich.”
For my taste, Donald Trump impresses me as the “Tar-Baby” and the GOP as Br’er Rabbit in the Uncle Remus stories.
The “Tar-Baby” is a doll made of tar and turpentine used to entrap Br’er Rabbit (a trickster who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn.) The more that Br’er Rabbit fights the Tar-Baby, the more entangled he becomes.
John McWhorter, an African American linguistic professor and “Black neocon (?)” and contributing editor at the new New Republic (not the old New Republic of liberal commentary) wrote, “[T]hey will hold the President responsible. Now, I don’t even want to be associated with him, it’s like touching a, a tar baby and you get it … you know you’re stuck and you’re part of the problem and you can’t get away. [emphasis original]
Trumpenstein as the GOP “tar baby”? Poetic justice in the form of paronomasia (word play).
Trump is not president yet but the GOP, at this rather late date, does not even want to be associated with him, let alone publicly support him. But they are stuck to Trumpenstein and can’t get away no matter how hard they try.
That is, the GOP can’t get away from the Trump-aryans — Trump’s KKK supporters including KKK grand wizard David Duke, The Daily Stormer (the media outlet for American Neo-Nazis), The Savage Nation (radio for rabid rightists), WhiteGenocideTM, American Renaissance, League of the South and the rest of the white supremacists.
Well, Br’er Rabbit is tangled up and come convention time the Tar-Baby is going to be all over Br’er Rabbit.
What choice does Br’er Rabbit have?
Tweedle Dee (Ted Cruz)?
Tweddle Dum (Marco Rubio)? (I have a lot of respect for Marco Rubio, though I don’t agree with his political agenda. A few days before President Obama went to Ethiopia in July 2015, Senator Rubio sent Obama a Letter (dated July 22, 2015) expressing “concerns regarding ongoing human rights abuses by the Ethiopian government against its own people.)
Obama went to Ethiopia and declared Ethiopia is a “democracy” after the ruling Thugtatorship of the Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front declared winning the May 2015 election by 100 percent.
When the defining moment came, Marco Rubio defined the moment. He stood with Ethiopians and demanded their human rights be respected.
When the defining moment came, Barack Obama was defined by the moment. Obama threw Ethiopians to the T-TPLF wolves.
I have to tell the truth even when it is not politically correct.
Br’er Rabbit is in a pickle, a hot sticky mess.
The coming constitutional crises circus (CCCC)
When is Trumpenstein’s other shoe gonna drop?
Last month Trump in a tweet said, “If [Ted Cruz] doesn’t clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen.”
In January, Trump said, “I’m not bringing a lawsuit. I promise. But the Democrats are going to bring a lawsuit” trying to disqualify Cruz if he becomes the Republican nominee.
That did not stop Trumps trumpeteers from filing a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Cruz’s presidential run.
Trumpenstein may not “bring a lawsuit against Cruz”.
But will he bring a lawsuit against Hillary?
Does Trump believe a woman can constitutionally become President of the United States?
The answer is obvious, of course, to Donald Trump or his circus Trumpeteers.
There ain’t no way, there is no how a woman can become President of the United States.
Check out Art. II of the Constitution. It is right there in black and white.
The President of the United States gotta be a man!
What exactly does the U.S. Constitution say about a woman being president.
It doesn’t.
In Article II (which creates the Executive branch of national government), the pronoun “he”, “his” is used 16 times. There is no reference to a “she” anywhere in the Constitution. No woman signed the Declaration of Independence or the U.S. Constitution.
The word “person” is used 8 times in Art. II.
Article II section 1 states:
The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years…
Each state shall appoint… a number of electors… but no Senator… or person holding an office…
… The electors shall meet… and vote … for two persons…
There shall be electors who “shall make a list of all the persons voted for…
… The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President…
… and if no person have a majority… the House shall in like manner choose the President…
In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice President…
… No person except a natural born citizen… shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years…
… The President shall… receive for his services, a compensation…
… Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation…
… he shall not receive within that period any other emolument from the United States,
… In case of the removal of the President’s… or his death…
… Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath
Article II section 2 states:
The President shall be commander in chief… he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments…
… he shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties…
Article II section 3 states:
… he shall from time to time give to the Congress information…
… he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses…
… he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper;
… he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers;
… he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed…
… He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties…
… He shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate…
There is no reference to a “she”, “her” or woman.
The “BIG CONSTITUTIONAL” Problem
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia sat on the court, such issues presented no real problems. They were as easy as ABC.
Justice Scalia filtered all constitutional questions through his antiquarian lens of original intent. He said, “Examining what the Founders meant when writing the Constitution is the best method for judging cases.”
In other words, the Constitution is written in a stone tablet and only the late neolithic oracle can divine and fix the meaning of the inscriptions.
Put another way, if you want to know what anything in the Constitution means, time travel to the Eighteenth century, circa 1787, and do an imaginary interview with the dead people who wrote the Constitution. Then voila! The secrets of the Constitution will be revealed to you. (I did not say interview the ghosts of the long and grateful dead framers of the U.S. Constitution.)
Justice Scalia took ancestor worship to a whole new level. The spirits of the dead constitutional ancestors have the power to inform us in the 21st century how to live our lives. Sounds like necromancy.
But talking about the dead and living, in January 2013, Justice Antonin G. Scalia declared the U.S. Constitution “is not a living document. It’s dead, dead, dead.”
Justice Scalia made the remark at Southern Methodist University law school indicating his exasperation with school children coming to visit the Supreme Court and describing the Constitution as a “living document”.
It must have been totally terrifying for the school children to hear their “living Constitution” declared dead three times over.
Is their Easter Bunny dead too? Their Tooth Fairy? Is Santa Claus dead?
The Grinch is dead!
But could a woman become President of the United States in the eyes of a “dead, dead, dead” Constitution?
When the Founders wrote Art. II, and used the pronoun “he”, “his” 16 times, did they mean “she”, “her”?
When the Founders wrote Art. II, and used the noun “person” 9 times, did they mean a “person” to include a woman?
Did the Founders even consider in the abstract the possibility of a woman becoming President of the United States?
What was John Adams’s reply when his wife Abigail wrote to remind him to “remember the ladies” when drafting a new “code of laws” for the new republic?
When Abigail threatened the ladies “are determined to foment a rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or Representation,” Adams said men were not really the “masters” of women but were “subject to the despotism of the petticoat.”
What Adams meant was that women have the “power of their womanhood”, and because of that they didn’t need to have the power of suffrage and equality.
If women can’t vote or have equality before the law at the inception of the Republic, as was manifestly “intended” in the 1787 Constitution, how could they even dream about becoming President of the United States?
In 1968, Bobby Kennedy said, “There’s no question about it. In the next 40 years a Negro can achieve the same position that my brother has.” In 2008, Barack Obama became president.
That’s different. The Fourteenth Amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…. are citizens of the United States and of the state…” Of course, “All persons” includes the former slaves.
But Justice Scalia did not believe “women” are part of “All persons.”
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), Justice Scalia joined the majority in elevating the corporation to the highest level of democratic citizenship and endowed it the right to free speech under the First Amendment on the same level as human beings.
In a concurring opinion Scalia wrote, “Modern corporations… would probably have been favored by most of our enterprising Founders—excluding, perhaps, Thomas Jefferson and others…” In other words, the Founders would have fully endowed “modern corporations” full free speech rights just like live citizens.
In an interview following the Citizens United decision, Scalia said the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not protect women against discrimination. “Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t,” opined Scalia.
Rather confusing. Corporations were intended to be “persons” at the inception of the Republic in 1787 but women were not?
The equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868 commands, “No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In other words, no state shall discriminate (subject a “person” to unequal treatment before the law) against a “person” living in the state in the way it administers its laws.
In antediluvian “Scalialogical” analysis, it is manifest that women are neither “he”, “him” nor “persons” within the “original meaning” of Art II or under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
So, absent a quick constitutional amendment, is Hillary Clinton constitutionally fit to occupy the office of President of the United States?
The Donald Republican Brothers Circus is getting weirder and more entertaining by the day.
I feel “sorry” for the Republicans.
It is indeed humiliating to have a dunce, buffoon and dork rolled into one as the party’s standard bearer.
But fair is fair. Trump is beating the establishment nominees fair and square at their own game.
There is all kind of talk about sabotaging Trump’s nomination. There is even crazy talk about blowing up the GOP to stop Trump.
I believe in fair play even for those I despise.
I do despise Trump. I would even borrow a couple of lines from Shakespeare’s Macbeth to express the depth of my feeling towards him. “Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men,/…Now, if you have a station in the file/Not i’ the worst rank of manhood, say ‘t.” ( Yes, you’re part of the species called men… Now, if you occupy some place in the list of men that isn’t down at the very bottom, tell me./)
But it is what it is and fair is fair.
If Trump wins the nomination, he wins the nomination. What a hard lesson divinely foretold: “For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
I just can’t wait for the Donald Constitutional Circus Court to begin, not to be confused with the Donald presidential primary circus.
Of course, all bets are off if Bernie Sanders is the Democrats’ nominee.
P.T. Barnum of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus allegedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Obviously, he must have said it anticipating the dingbat supporters of Donald the Trumpet of self-promotion.
The GOP calculated Trump would eventually be relegated to the freak show section of their circus.
Now, Donald le freak is c’est Chic and winning.
Grand Old Republicans are freaking out!
Chill, Republicans!
Le Freak, c’est Chic!