SundayReview | CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER

Behold Our Child (KINK)

Peter Wehner
Peter Wehner AUG. 26, 2017

President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up to supporters at the Phoenix Convention Center during a rally on August 22, 2017 in Phoenix, Arizona. Credit Ralph Freso/Getty Images
REPUBLICAN lawmakers have seen the Trump disaster coming for a while now. They simply have no clue what to do about it.

A couple of months ago before we learned that Donald Trump Jr. wanted to spend quality time with people he believed represented the Russian government, before the president publicly humiliated his attorney general and was abandoned by top business executives, before he claimed some very fine people were marching in Charlottesville, Va., alongside neo-N**is and w***e s*********ts a Republican member of Congress I spoke with called the president a child king,a self-pitying fool.

Even then, the words that came to mind when some congressional Republicans described the president were incompetent and unfit. There were concerns about his emotional stability. There's now a realization this isn't going to change, one top Republican aide on Capitol Hill said. Yet there is the simultaneous realization, as a House member told me when talking about Republicans in their home districts, that we're never going to have a majority of people against him.

Maybe, but for now this presents Republican members of Congress who are privately alarmed by Mr. Trump with a predicament. Regardless of what he does, a vast majority of his core supporters are sticking with him. A recent Monmouth University poll found that of the 41 percent of Americans who currently approve of the job he's doing, 61 percent said they cannot see Mr. Trump doing anything that would make them disapprove of him. Mr. Trump was on to something when he said in January 2016, I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldnt lose v**ers.

The political problem facing Republicans is that Mr. Trump's presidency is a wreck. His agenda is dead in the water. A special counsel is overseeing an investigation of his campaign. The West Wing is dysfunctional. And President Trump is deeply unpopular with most Americans.

Continue reading the main story

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll illustrates the dilemma Republican politicians face. It found that 28 percent of polled v**ers say they approved of Mr. Trump's response to Charlottesville. But among Republican v**ers, the figure was 62 percent, while 72 percent of conservative Republicans approved.

The more offensive Mr. Trump is to the rest of America, the more popular he becomes with his core supporters. One policy example: At a recent rally in Phoenix, the president said he was willing to shut down the government over the question of funding for a border wall, which most of his base favors but only about a third of all Americans want.

Much of this mess is of the Republican Party's own making. Let's not forget that Mr. Trump's political rise began with his promulgation of the r****t conspiracy theory that President Obama was not a natural-born American citizen. The Trump presidency is the result of years of destructive mental habits and moral decay. So there's no easy solution for responsible Republicans. But there is a step they have to take.

It continues to amaze how the stupids continue to support the worst crooked pissident in United States History