Mirsky: It's Not Your Grandmother's GOP

It’s not your grandmother’s Republican Party that we’ve been watching on Cable TV for the large part of 2015. It’s not the Party of Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt or even of George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush.

No, this is a Party gone mad.

Donald Trump, leading Republican candidate for President in 2016, at Tuesday’s Republican Presidential Debate, was asked a question about the Nuclear Triad, that’s the system of protective redundancy that we’ve built into our nuclear arms defense system: nuclear bombs can be delivered in three ways, by airplane, by land-launched missile, and by missiles launched from nuclear submarines. This was explained to Trump by the questioner, and Trump was asked which part of the Triad would he seek to upgrade first. The correct answer for a political debate would have been all three, or at the very least one would want to mention the aging airplanes upon which we currently rely.
But of course Donald Trump didn’t answer the question at all, because he is a 69-year-old real estate developer and reality-TV star who doesn’t know anything about our national defense, and in fact could not even respond to the question at all.

We have a problem over in Syria and Iraq, with a group of terrorists called “ISIS”. It doesn’t matter much what you call them but they’ve caused trouble recently in very dramatic and dastardly ways, in Paris and in our own country, in San Bernardino, California, a place of warmth and sunshine and full of hope for the good life. Not a place you would want to leave unprotected. So we have to defeat ISIS.

But to defeat ISIS, we need the assistance of our allies in the region, which include the countries of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which are substantial countries with significant resources and which are also Islamic countries. So how does Donald Trump hope to help the United States, our country, to gain the support of our Islamic allies, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, countries we need to assist us in the effort to destroy ISIS, so that the job will not have to be done by a generation of young American men and women? How does Trump get the support of Turkey and Saudi Arabia?
You know how. He doesn’t get their support. Because he has just insulted all Islamic people the world over by stating that Islamic people as a group should be prevented from entering the United States. That’s not just racism or religious bigotry, that’s a proposal of unrelenting and damaging stupidity.

If there is another attack on the United States by ISIS, you can thank Donald Trump, because while President Barack Obama has been trying to minimize fear and hysteria over terrorism while addressing the issue largely behind the scenes, Donald Trump has been all but asking for another attack.

That’s who the Cable TV Networks, CNN and FOXNews, are selling you for your Republican Nominee for President in 2016. This is the person Bill O’Reilly of FOXNews is now calling a “genius”.

It’s not a pretty picture.