Why the GOP Will Never Accept President Hillary Clinton
With the hiring of Steve Bannon, Trump has ensured that the party will continue its habit of de-legitimizing the Dems.
By Jeff Greenfield
August 18, 2016
A long, long time ago (as recently as eight years, in fact) in a not-so-strange and distant land (our own, actually), it was not surprising that a candidate for president might have a kind word or two about his rival. Jimmy Carter could end a debate in 1976 by calling Gerald Ford “a good and decent man”; Bob Dole could remind the 1996 GOP convention that Bill Clinton is “my opponent—and he is my opponent, not my enemy.” And John McCain could firmly reject the idea that Barack Obama was an alien presence—in fact not even a legitimate American. "I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States,” McCain told an agitated supporter in 2008.
But McCain and Dole were courtly exceptions in the modern Republican Party, whose present nominee, Donald Trump, has taken it in precisely the opposite direction. From the start of his rise to the top of the GOP, Trump has argued that not only are his Democratic adversaries wrong, they're not even legitimate. Trump first made his case as contender for the 2016 nomination by becoming the leading voice of the “birther” movement—raising baseless suspicions about whether Obama was born in the United States. Now he has become a presidential nominee who argues that his opponent belongs in jail, and who says the only way he can lose the state of Pennsylvania—where he now trails by double-digits—is if there is cheating or "rigging." When “lock her up!” becomes the default chant at a Republican rally, “good and decent woman” is not likely to be on the lips of any GOP speaker in describing Hillary Clinton.
more
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-gop-hillary-clinton-delegitimizing-dems-214170
