Donald Trump Should Step Down

Adam Shaw, a political reporter on FoxNews.com, published an opinion piece saying that Pope Francis needs to resign. As I read the article, my mind almost automatically started changing words around, until there was a different opinion piece entirely in front of me. Check it out:

With his sublimely low-energy entrance into the race, Trump immediately cemented his reputation as an “unconventional character” who created chaos out of calm with ridiculous, childish, and inflammatory pronouncements. The wall that Mexico will pay for, his multiple derogatory statements about women, his mocking a disabled reporter, and even his snarky comments about Pope Francis are but a few examples.

Several of his comments have needed to be walked back, ‘clarified’ by advisers or by friendly reporters on cable news. His crazy comments have attracted attention, much of it negative, and have damaged America's standing in the world, perhaps even endangering our country.

Trump’s candidacy has been confusing to the Republican faithful from the beginning. Many of them, staring at sixteen or seventeen choices on the debate stage, thought he would provide some much needed early energy and then fade away, however that was not the case. One by one, he picked off the others in what has become a GOP primary season tradition – the circular firing squad. When he became the presumptive nominee, more and more Republicans got scared, and confused, and did not know what was happening to their party.

Recently, Trump went so far as to say that the LGBT community has the right to live their lives, love who they want, and express their identity – something with which most members of party, and many in his professed Christian faith firmly disagree, for those words are completely in conflict with their strongly held Republican and personal beliefs, and with all for which the party stands.

Trump doesn’t give his fellow Republicans much credit; he has called a bona fide war hero a loser for being captured; he's told the party leadership to be quiet if they don't want to go along with him. When he nullifies their beliefs and promotes his own, it implies that Republicans are ignorant, uneducated fools who don’t understand the long history of their own party; the history, we're told, stretches from Lincoln to Reagan, the Bush I and Bush II administrations notwithstanding. Yes, he loves the uneducated, just as he loves the blacks, and the women and the Jews and the gays and the Mexicans, and they all love him, along with the Chinese and the NRA and Franklin Graham.

Lincoln, Reagan and Goldwater are rolling in unison in their graves; I suggest there are Republicans wishing they too were dead, so as to avail themselves of the same opportunity. 

He does not care how he defies, and defiles, the Republican party and the believers. While the party’s authority rests on their ability to promote their message, their beliefs, their positions, and to have those supported by any who would wear their colors into battle, Trump has turned that on its head, to the party's peril. He simply does not care.

His words and actions demonstrate a lack of faith in the party and its believers. He’ll take their money,  and their endorsements, yet he treats leaders and followers alike even more poorly than he claims to have been treated by the rest of us. In doing so, he has brought the party’s very legitimacy into question.

How can he say horrible things about everyone his party is trying to bring into the fold? How can he ask us to infringe on the Second Amendment? Or suggest that we approve of the world becoming a wild, wild west of countries brandishing nuclear weapons? Or suggest, even for a minute, that we would leave our allies swinging in the wind? Or announce that the Republican party will be the party of the worker? That America will negotiate her debt with other countries? Raise taxes on the wealthy? Tell the US military to commit war crimes? Punish women who have abortions? Invite Kim Jong-Un to the White House? 

The list of violated Republican sacraments goes on and on and on.

Once upon a time, Republicans would  have stuck it out with a bad candidate, held their noses and stood by their man, even in ignominious defeat. Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican, after all. But now is the time for the faithful to look to the gilded tower in the East, and ask themselves, “is this man able to lead the Republican Party?" The answer is no.

Trump has proven himself unable to support the party’s sacraments and unable to garner full and active support of its leaders and faithful. He is doing perhaps irreparable damage to the party, damage that may take multiple election cycles to heal.

Donald Trump should step aside.

Republicans should demand it, so they can begin to recover from this horribly ill-advised, self-centered, pompous, short-on-content long-on-self-promotions candidacy before it’s too late.

There. See how easy that was?