Dave Molesworth: FrankenTrump a symptom of GOP’s weakness

Donald Trump is the love child of right wing conspiracy media and the tea party’s war on government coupled with nativist racism, which has been with us since our country’s beginnings. The old Confederacy oozes to the surface only when one of the political parties becomes weak. This is one of those times.

Republicans can blame themselves for enabling the rise of Trump’s White Nationalist Party who threaten and intimidate their opponents while de-legitimizing our democratically elected officials and institutions. The Confederacy tried to do the same by claiming Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the legitimately elected president and therefore had no authority over them. That was the precursor to the Civil War.

Trump’s rise shows the world how fragile and dangerous the Republican Party truly is. He is the logical conclusion to the paranoid conservatism they’ve been selling for decades. Trump’s use of “either/or” reasoning, his appeals to fear, his scapegoating and bullying, his creation of a straw man – reasonable people don’t accept these things, but the Republican Party does. Now they’ve unleashed their Frankenstein monster on all of us. But after a year of attacking the village, FrankenTrump has now turned on his creators. We all know the ending.

This story was originally published October 18, 2016 at 5:18 PM with the headline "Dave Molesworth: FrankenTrump a symptom of GOP’s weakness."