Today's Sunday reading- Hey GOP. YOU BUILT TRUMP, YOU OWN TRUMP

As mentioned before, Charlie Pierce at Esquire.com is required reading if you're sick and tired of the no-content BS that qualifies as today's "political journalism" from corporate media. And today's article is especially good, as it notes that the act of Donald Trump is merely a logical conclusion after decades of the moderns GOP's sickening act.

Charlie starts by quoting the AP report on yesterday's GOP event in Elkhorn, which was originally supposed to have Trump speaking at it, but he was taken off the speaking list after Friday's leaked tape where Drumpf gave a recommendation to "grab {women] by the pussy." Then Mike Pence was supposed to be there to sub in, but he bailed to. The remaining WisGOPs that were up on stage tried to avoid discussing the issue, or bringing up Trump's name at all, and that didn't sit well with the deplorables who were there to get their hate on.

“Trump is a great man,” said Scott Reese, a 40-year-old plumber wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat. “We all make mistakes.”

Jean Stanley, a 50-year-old woman from New Berlin, Wisconsin, came to the rally wearing a pink T-shirt with bold, black lettering that said “Wisconsin Women Love Trump.”

“He’s a real human,” Stanley said. “It was a long time ago. We all have something in our past. He was a Hollywood icon then.”

Julie Marso, from Milwaukee, said she still supports Trump.

“You should vote according to the issues facing this country, not the kind of dirt you can dig up on people,” she said.

Yes, I'm sure these are serious, "issues-based" voters that soberly analyze the positions of all candidates, and choose accordingly. Riiiiiiight.

But hey, if they believe in issues, maybe these righties from the Milwaukee media market should take a look at what the GOP has stood for and done over the last few decades. That's what Pierce reminds us of, and connects the dots to the hateful, dishonest mess that is the Trump 2016 candidacy.

Do I mock? Of course, I do. The Republican Party has been edging toward this catastrophe for 40 years, ever since it let goons like the late Terry Dolan help run its senatorial campaigns in the late 1970s. Dolan led to Lee Atwater, who led to Karl Rove and, altogether, they made Donald Trump not an aberration, but a culmination. It took into itself the debris of American apartheid. It allied itself with radicalized American Protestantism. It adopted a basic political philosophy of vandalism and nihilism. When confronted with an opportunity for human decency, such as in the case of Terri Schiavo, the party opted for cruelty. When presented an opportunity for political unity, such as in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, the party opted for the despicable in domestic politics and for the barbaric overseas. When handed an opportunity to change course, such as when the deregulated casino economy nearly destroyed the world in 2008, it doubled down on the basic economic philosophy that caused the wreckage in the first place. And when it became plain that the party was on the wrong side of history, such as the movement for marriage equality, it chose to work in the states through pestiferous god-botherers like Mike Pence, whose name Kelly Ayotte will write in for president.
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The Republican Party has been edging toward this catastrophe for 40 years. When it won, the party opted for triumphalism. When it lost, it opted for obstruction. It has blown through democratic norms in every branch of the government. In the executive, it lied and tortured and worked almost exclusively to shove as much of the country's wealth upwards. As a legislative majority, it has consistently refused to do even the most fundamental tasks of governing the country. In the judiciary, the judges so carefully nurtured in the think-tank terrariums of the organized Right have let loose a flood of money into our politics and have worked assiduously to carve away the franchise from the people who might most inconvenience the party on Election Day. They have come dangerously close to completing the project of creating a new Jim Crow to ensure a new Gilded Age. And now, there are not sufficient roosts for all the chickens. If you have a party dedicated to vandalism and nihilism, how can you possibly be surprised when your presidential nomination is spirited away by a career vandal and a superior nihilist?

It doesn't matter now if he drops out or not. He has shown the world what the black heart of modern Republicanism—and of the modern form of conservatism that drives it—really looks like. He has become its beau ideal. He will stand for it until the party commits itself to real change and genuine outreach to those people it now only employs as targets for its timorous angry base to aim at. Whether he stays or whether he goes—and, god, I hope he stays—Donald Trump has burned down all the camouflage. He is what they are.​

And that needs to hung around the necks of every Republican running for office in this last month- how do you differ from Trumpism, is it by substance (and risk losing all of these low-info and mis-info voters) or is it one of TONE (where you basically agree with the mentality, but you'd never say something like "grab her by the pussy").

And no, Charlie Sykes, you don't get to try to squirm out from this and remake your career as some kind of "principled conservative". Your principle is suckering people for money, and after 23 years of doing so on the airwaves, the alternate reality you helped build is biting your GOP/Bradley paymasters in the ass. You don't get to throw your hands up and say "I don't get what's going on!" You and your fellow GOP oligarchs have earned an ass-kicking for your party, and it needs to be delivered by the voters.

I have no sympathy for these slimeballs and the weak-minded rubes who fell for the GOP's garbage. You built this Bubble World of Bullshit yourself, righties. Deal with bursting and the cleanup.