Joe Scarborough continued his excoriation of Donald Trump as a failed president destroying the Republican Party on Morning Joe as a follow-up to the column he wrote this morning for one of the major daily rags.
Scarborough’s piece “Trump is killing the Republican Party” in the Washington Post was not at all kind to the Trump, and he admonished Republicans for following Trump over a cliff. He started the column with the following reality slap.
I did not leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left its senses. The political movement that once stood athwart history resisting bloated government and military adventurism has been reduced to an amalgam of talk-radio resentments. President Trump’s Republicans have devolved into a party without a cause, dominated by a leader hopelessly ill-informed about the basics of conservatism, U.S. history and the Constitution.
America’s first Republican president reportedly said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity. But if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” The current Republican president and the party he controls were granted monopoly power over Washington in November and already find themselves spectacularly failing Abraham Lincoln’s character exam.
Joe Scarborough later dedicated a segment of his program where he and his panelist questioned the direction of the Republican Party.
Joe Scarborough scorches Donald Trump on Morning Joe
Nicholas Confessore first described what is occurring with the Republican Party.
“I think what we’re seeing here is a once-in-a-lifetime shift in what it means to be a conservative or Republican,” said Nick Confessore. “I think President Trump is leading that shift for better or for worse. Just think about the pillars of Republicanism, of Conservatism back in your days, your salad days Joe right. It was taxes, it was free trade, it was a hawkish foreign policy with the U.S. at the center of the world as the guarantor of security around the world. It was anti-communist and patriotism. So what does Trump replace that with? With nationalism, blood, and soil, with hatred of the media and for supporters with faith with being Christian or faithful. And so I think he has shifted that ground and I think that members of Congress see that 85% and asked themselves, so what does Trump know that we don’t. Because I think half of Congress is kind of chugging along and an older version of being a Republican. And everybody is trying to figure out exactly what it means and who is a part of it. And what it means for policy, foreign policy, and domestic policy. And there’s this flux. And I’m not sure we get a clear answer on it until Trump is re-elected or not re-elected, frankly.
Scarborough then responded with a further striking admonishment.
“In my Washington Post column out today that’s what I talked about, why I left the Republican Party,” Morning Joe said. “And said this party would be unrecognizable to William Buckley or Ronald Reagan or some of the other Republicans. The Conservatives are supposed to be for smaller and more responsible government. They’re supposed to be for a rational foreign policy. You go back when George W. Bush was president, he promised to be a small government conservative and he talked about a very restrained foreign policy. We actually got record-setting deficits, record-setting debts, a foreign policy that would so utopian would make Woodrow Wilson blush. And now you look at Donald Trump and you look at the budgets that he’s proposed. You’re looking at a president that’s going to take a trillion dollar debt to a trillion dollar national debt. There is nothing conservative about Donald Trump nothing. He’s been a Democrat for most of his life. He discovered birtherism in 2011. And Republicans are literally following him following him over an ideological cliff. And the question is, why isn’t there more of a resistance against this guy who’s been a Democrat most of his life who now is not even remotely conservative at home or abroad. And instead of resisting Russia is actually embracing Russia with both arms.”
Enough said? Resist!