What a difference 4 years makes for a Republican Party that has lost whatever soul it had

Happy Anniversary, Republican Party!

This week marks 4 years since you started publicly declaring that Donald Trump had jumped the shark. The famous Access Hollywood tapes had been published October 7 by the Washington Post and the reviews were rolling in.

Across the nation, leaders of Trump’s own political party were calling for Trump to resign from the presidential ticket just 30 days away. They were aghast not only at the disgusting words that had spewed from Trump’s filthy mouth in 2005, but his sneering refusal to show any contrition at all in 2016.

Four years ago, in this very week, the nation’s newspapers all read like the New York Daily News, which proclaimed in giant Trump-like caps on its front page:

“DELETE YOUR CAMPAIGN! Calls from both sides for Trump to quit.”

Here’s just a sampling of what was reported, coming just from some Republican senators, on October 9, 2016:

From Senator John McCain of Arizona: “Donald Trump’s behavior this week makes it impossible to offer even conditional support for his candidacy.”

From Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, this tweet: “For the benefit of the country, his party and his family, and for his own good, Trump should with withdraw.”

From Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: “I cannot and will not support Donald Trump for president. He has forfeited his right to be our party’s nominee.”

From Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska: “Trump is obviously not going to win. But he can still make an honorable move: Step aside and let Mike Pence try.”

From Senator John Thune of “Donald Trump should withdraw, and Mike Pence should be our nominee, effective immediately.”

From Senator Mike Lee of Utah (and the Department of Redundancy Department): “I respectfully ask you with all due respect to step aside. Step down.”

For his part, Trump brandished his CAPS LOCK Twitter firearms: “The media and the establishment want me out of the race so badly. I WILL NEVER DROP OUT OF THE RACE, WILL NEVER LET MY SUPPORTERS DOWN.”

Trump won the argument, of course, and here are we are--four long years later--with the nation facing far greater crises than keeping the newspaper and TV news programming out of the sight and sound of the little ones. Trump’s filth is the least of our problems.

Today, his insanity is a bit more troubling than his incivility.

McCain, of course, has passed away and his widow Cindy McCain has endorsed former Vice-President Joe Biden. As for the others in our sampling, watching Trump unravel with ranting madness that may or may not be the drugs talking--on the world stage--apparently isn’t as concerning for Republican senators in 2020 as what he was heard saying in 2016 from inside a trailer 11 years earlier.

The word “Trump” has not appeared on the Twitter feeds of Senators Gardner, Murkowski, Sasse, Thune and Lee in the past week. Gardner, Thune and Sasse are pretty stoked about SCOTUS nominee Amy Coney Barrett, with no reference to the guy who nominated her. Murkowski recently enjoyed an Anchorage bike ride. Lee’ spending a fair amount of time defending his recent “we are not a democracy” Tweets.

Remember, all six of these senators did not merely condemn Donald Trump in on October 9, 2016. They specifically demanded--in the strongest and clearest of language--that he step down as the Republican nominee for president, 30 days before the election

Four years later to the day, not a single one of them has either the guts or the character to speak up as a madman endangers our democracy and the world. Not one.

On October 9, 2020, the question seems to be: “Do you remember his name?” To borrow a word from a noted man of limited vocabulary, “Sad.”

But, come on. Anniversaries are meant to be celebrated. This is the perfect time to revisit the past.

To refresh Republican senators’ memories, they read something like this, as Trump displayed uncommon humility regarding a failed predatory conquest:

“I moved on her, actually… I moved on her, and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married. Then all of a sudden, I see her, she’s now got the big phony tits and everything.

And who could forget this passage, now sacred MAGA scripture?

“I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

Yes. If you’re Donald Trump, and you have destroyed so many political souls, you can do anything.

But only if the rest of us let him.