The Self-immolation of the Republican Party - by Hénock Gugsa

The Self-immolation of the Republican Party 

- by Hénock Gugsa -

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ///// ~~~~~~~~~~~~
[extracted from "The G.O.P Created Donald Trump" - by Nicholas Kristoff, NY Times]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

.... 
So how did we get to this stage where the leading Republican candidate is loathed by the Republican establishment?

In part, I think, Republican leaders brought this on themselves. Over the decades they pried open a Pandora’s box, a toxic politics of fear and resentment, sometimes brewed with a tinge of racial animus, and they could never satisfy the unrealistic expectations [of smaller government] that they nurtured among supporters.
....
[An] echo chamber deluded its believers to the point that it sometimes apparently killed them. During the 2009-10 flu pandemic, right-wing broadcasters like Limbaugh and Glenn Beck denounced the call for flu shots, apparently seeing it as a nefarious Obama plot.

The upshot was that Democrats were 50 percent more likely than Republicans to say that they would get flu shots, according to a peer-reviewed article in The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law. So when the pandemic killed up to 18,000 Americans, they presumably were disproportionately conservatives.
....
============================================
 

Missing Obama Already - by David Brooks

 

[What We Will "Miss" Most About Obama]
**== extracted from a recent David Brooks editorial ==**
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ /// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 ..., a resilient sense of optimism. To hear Sanders or Trump, Cruz and Ben Carson campaign is to wallow in the pornography of pessimism, to conclude that this country is on the verge of complete collapse. That’s simply not true. We have problems, but they are less serious than those faced by just about any other nation on earth.

People are motivated to make wise choices more by hope and opportunity than by fear, cynicism, hatred and despair. Unlike many current candidates, Obama has not appealed to those passions.

No, Obama has not been temperamentally perfect. Too often he’s been disdainful, aloof, resentful and insular. But there is a tone of ugliness creeping across the world, as democracies retreat, as tribalism mounts, as suspiciousness and authoritarianism take center stage.

Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him.
========================
Source: David Brooks, "I Miss Barack Obama", 
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/opinion/i-miss-barack-obama.html?_r=0