After McCain, Will Anyone from the Republican Party Tell Trump No?

Facebook prompts “What’s on your mind?”

What’s on my mind?

Senator John McCain was laid to rest yesterday. The self-described “maverick” was unafraid to speak Truth to Power. Although he was the 2008 GOP Presidential candidate, polls in the week since his death showed him with more popularity among Democrats than among his own party. Trump’s early criticism of the late Senator were widely seen as the kind of gaffe that would end his presidential bid before it even got rolling. And were Trump a “normal” politician, it probably would have spelled political doom. Instead it was one of the first times we saw his remarkable ability to come back from all but certain political disasters (often self-inflicted).

What’s on my mind are the heart rending news stories from June, depicting children, many as young as 2, (some even younger) torn from their parents by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials acting in our name, paid for with our tax dollars.


When did we criminalize being poor? Or having a run of bad luck?


What’s on my mind are the same questions I’ve had for years, going back long before 2016.

What happened to the Republican Party? When did we criminalize being poor? Or having a run of bad luck? When did they become so cruel?

I remember a time when the GOP stood FOR something. Growing up in NH in the 70s and 80s, Republicans had a lock on the state. But that was back when it was widely understood that the public good encompassed much more than military muscle. Stereotypes always have some basis in fact, and back then, when entertainment and politics were still quite separate occupations, long before we elected an actor (let alone a reality TV star) to the Presidency, Republicans were seen as being more fiscally conservative, pro-business and pro-military (and military spending), while Democrats were the “peaceniks” who, after the assassination of JFK in the 1960s, had brought us the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act along with Medicare, Medicaid and the rest of LBJ’s Great Society /War on Poverty programs.

Somewhere along the line they abandoned those principles to become “The Party of No!” by 2008 and 2012.

By the last year of President Obama’s time in office, the GOP’S dug in their heels to deny President Obama a Supreme Court appointment and any meaningful legislative accomplishments after his first two years in office. Obstruction became their top priority. ANY hint of cooperation was met with swift punishment. They (leadership, voters and big-money donors alike) severely punished anyone from their own ranks (!) who dared commit the “treason” of expressing even a whiff of bipartisanship. Cooperation with Democrats on ANYTHING was a guarantee of being “primaried” by a well-funded, political unknown with ever more extreme views.

So we shouldn’t be surprised at where we find ourselves now. The Access Hollywood tape told us all we need to know about the moral relativism in this party that for decades has held itself up as the standard bearer of “family values.” They judge harshly all who do not subscribe to their increasingly narrow view of how the world should work. They can’t even stand up to their leader. Because they stood by him then, so their fate is tied to his.

And besides, he has a pen. And he is swayable to use it to enact their favorite forms of cruelty.

But make no mistake. Today’s Republicans are NOT conservatives. Their tax overhaul based on long-discredited trickle-down economics is a giveaway to corporations, with no lasting benefits to anyone else.

Families still fight their way to our borders fleeing violence and poverty, and when they presented themselves at the border crossing seeking asylum as is their international human right. <Source>

children as young as 2 were torn from their mothers’ arms.

And now, two months past a court-imposed deadline to reunite all the families more than 500 children remain separated from their parents, many of whom have already been deported.


The Trump Administration’s “zero tolerance” practice of ripping families apart is unjust, unjustified and unjustifiable.


Every day, sometimes every hour, seems to bring a new low from this President that dishonors the sacrifice of all those who gave their lives in service to this nation.

But we are the ones alive today.

This is happening on our watch.

History has its eyes on all of US.

In years to come, How will we explain this chapter in our history, this behavior of our government to our children? And to our children’s children?

    Amy Marchand Collins

    Written by

    Activist (Special Needs Mama Bear) Knitting a World More Just & Fair| Being in Nature = Living Prayer | She/Her/Hers

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