GOP committing suicide
Despite the latest trouncing of Donald Trump in a presidential debate, a path to victory remains for the Republican Party. Will it be seized? There is not a chance.
With the release of the 2005 tape in which Trump expressed his fondness for groping, kissing and sexually assaulting women, including those who are married, he is now not only a great challenge to the party, but radioactive, as evidenced by the number of former elected officials who were Trump supporters that have been forced to jump ship.
Vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence espouses cruel, exclusionary and extreme policies, but in other respects, he is precisely what the American people crave, the antidote to his toxic running mate. Pence is a dignified, refined, intelligent, well-spoken and likable gentleman. He has not joined Trump in his consistent bombast against those he perceives as foes, and he has no known skeletons in his closet, despite years of having served in high public office.
I am convinced that a Pence-Clinton duel would provide the GOP with a comfortable margin of victory. What stands in the way of that victory is Trump, who would sooner bring down the entire party and cede control of at least one house of Congress to the Democrats than to admit that he is not the person to lead the party. When he is defeated, he can assert that it was because the election was stolen from him, that the moderators of debates and the press were biased, and that his microphones were sabotaged.
The Republican Party is now highly likely to endure the drubbing it deserves on Nov. 8. It has left voters of goodwill and reason, serving to commit suicide.
Oren M. Spiegler
Upper St. Clair