What has happened to the Republican Party?

It wasn't that many years ago that the "Republican Party" and "Ronald Reagan" were synonymous.  Conservatives were proud to say they were "Reagan Republicans".  He would bend and compromise if necessary, but NEVER when it came to the Soviet Union.  He stood firm, gave them no quarter, worked with and within NATO, and eventually backed them down.  Ronald Reagan was tough!

The USSR officially collapsed on December 26, 1991, on GHW Bush's watch, but it was all due to Reagan's perseverance.  Reagan very famously said, when talking about our arms control treaty with the Soviets, "Trust, but verify."  He did not say, "Well, they said they were abiding by the treaty, and that's good enough for me."

Early in his Presidential term a very naive George Dubya Bush once met with Vladimir Putin and said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy....I was able to get a sense of his soul."  Later, a much more experienced and worldly Sec Defense Robert Gates said after he met V Putin, "I....looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw a stone cold killer."

It's now said the GOP has become Donald Trump's party as [brilliantly] designed by former advisor Steve Bannon.  Rank and file Republicans rarely say anything negative about Trump.  His brag, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters" has been proven essentially true.  President Trump met with Putin in Helsinki recently and fawned all over him.  He had just been briefed on the 12 Russian intelligence officers who were indicted for meddling in our 2016 election with Vladimir Putin's express approval, but said he believed Putin's denial instead.  

Republicans began to stir uncomfortably, Trump backpedaled his sweetness weakly, and his faithful seem to have gone compliant again.  Their stock, canned comeback to any criticism is "well, Hillary did a lot worse."  For the record, Hillary's emails, Watergate, Teapot Dome, etc, were all criminal scandals, no doubt, but none of that has anything to do with the way Donald Trump is behaving today.  A bank robber can't use as his defense, "well, I only got $500....Hillary got $1,000."

I have many very intelligent, good friends who resemble the description of the Trump Republican I just described.  I encourage them to continue to present their positions on health care, immigration, tax reform, etc.  Those are all things we can reasonably debate.  Kowtowing to Russia and the thug-killer Vladimir Putin should be beyond debate.

I suggest you refresh yourself with the Steele Dossier (here) that was in the news last year.  The jest of it was that the Russians/Putin had some incriminating evidence on Donald Trump that they could someday use to blackmail the new President.  Given the recent strangely cozy US/Russian relations, I expect you'll see this topic soon re-enter the news.

S

The next Big Stink

This has been a really bitter election year, a really bitter and divisive 4 years for that matter.  Here's something to consider:  I'll bet you the upcoming election results will NOT end the bitterness, but will intensify it.  Here's why....the electoral college might well crown one man the duly-elected "winner" while the popular vote will say the other candidate really won.

So what exactly is this electoral college? It was our Founding Father's way of putting a layer between the common man, the actual voter, and the election process.  They didn't actually trust the common man.  They were afraid a tyrant would somehow get control of a party and be able to manipulate enough uneducated naive voters to win the popular vote, and this was their way of being able to override such vote rigging.  (They were a very suspicious / paranoid bunch!)

FYI, in the election of 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes had a quarter-million fewer popular votes, but won the electoral college vote 185-184.  In the election of 1888 Benjamin Harrison had 80K fewer popular votes, but won the electoral college vote by a lopsided 233-168.  And more recently George W. Bush won the election of 2000 with 500K fewer popular votes, but with 5 more electoral votes, 271-266.

I'm seeing signs something similar might happen next month.  They say Obama and Romney are neck-and-neck in popular votes, but the number of solid Obama states has many more electoral votes than Romney's solidly red states. Regardless of which candidate you / I prefer this election year, I just think that's wrong.

So why don't we just do away with the electoral college and vote directly for president?  Because it would take a Constitutional Amendment, which would require a super majority of state legislatures and congress, and BOTH parties have benefited at one time or another from the screwy electoral college process.  Both see they have more to lose than to gain.  In short, nothing is going to change.

Sharp as our Founding Fathers were, I'm thinking they bungled this one, at least as seen through modern eyes.

S