Republicans must stop our unfit president

Will Rep. McMorris Rodgers continue to hitch her political wagon to Trump?

EDITORIAL

(Oct. 10, 2017) — The Washington Post reports today that President Donald Trump’s aides are scrambling to do damage control from his daily outbursts: “Frustrated by his Cabinet and angered by criticism of his administration’s response to hurricanes, the president has torched bridges all around him, nearly imploded an informal deal to protect young immigrants known as ‘DREAMers,’ and plunged into the culture wars on issues such as the national anthem.”

And that was published before this morning’s Trump tweet mocking the height of Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has warned us all that the president is so reckless that he could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”

This morning The New York Times reports: “In labeling Sen. Corker ‘liddle,’ the president was evidently returning to a theme. He considered Corker for secretary of state during the transition after last year’s election but was reported to have told associates that Corker, at 5-foot-7, was too short to be the nation’s top diplomat. Instead, Trump picked Rex Tillerson, who is several inches taller but whose own relationship with the president has deteriorated to the point that he was said to have called Trump a ‘moron’.”

This is not entertainment. This isn’t sport. These are the actions of a childish, unstable man with the power to push our nation into war. We have reached a tipping point about, as The Washington Post editorializes this morning, what to do with an unfit president: “One avenue open to Congress would be to remove the president from office. If indeed Mr. Trump is so reckless that he could set the nation ‘on the path to World War III,’ as Mr. Corker said… this possibility can’t be dismissed.”

Republicans control Congress. Only Republicans have the power to hold our dangerously unfit president accountable and protect our nation from his reckless, unstable behavior and actions. And while it’s important that Republicans have the courage to call out this president’s fitness for office, that’s not enough. They must take action.

It is noteworthy that Corker has felt empowered to make his bold critique only after he had decided to retire rather than run for reelection in 2018. As Andrew Prokup of Vox explains: “His GOP colleagues, though, are not so liberated. So though Corker has asserted that ‘the vast majority’ of his fellow Republican senators understand ‘what we’re dealing with here,’ most of them remain hesitant to discuss the issue in public. Because of that reticence, the discussion about what potentially to do about a president who according to some is dangerously unstable has been choked off. So the seriousness of the dangers Corker is warning about — World War III! — doesn’t seem matched by a similarly serious proposed remedy.”

Here’s the bottom line: Republicans who remain afraid to criticize Trump publicly are putting electoral politics and their personal political careers ahead of the nation’s interests and Americans’ safety. They are crossing their fingers that the United States, its military forces and its citizens will survive four — perhaps eight?! — years of his baiting other unstable leaders in North Korea, Russia and the Middle East, and his stoking of racial and cultural animosity here at home, without it leading to deadly armed conflict.

We’re looking at you, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. You are the highest ranking Republican from Washington state. And not only have you been unwilling to call out Trump’s instability and dangerously irrational behavior to date, you continue to act as his faithful surrogate on policy matters.

You were Washington’s only member of Congress from either party to support Trump’s indefensible, unpopular efforts to take away health care from millions of Americans — and thousands of your constituents. And after that effort failed, you pivot to parroting Trumps’ bald-faced lies that his “tax reform” plan isn’t simply just another deficit-exploding, trickle-down boondoggle for the rich. Serious people recognize Trump’s tax plan as an atrocity of demonstrably false economics.

Rep. McMorris Rodgers, it’s time for you to decide whether you will continue to hitch your political wagon to the fortunes of a dangerously unstable president and, in doing so, put the nation at risk. If you continue on this course, shame on you… again.

David Groves is Editor of The Stand. Although it is a news service of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, the positions and opinions expressed in The Stand aren’t necessarily those of the WSLC.