CT Republicans Must Denounce Donald Trump

CT Republicans Must Denounce Donald Trump

Anyone keeping a log of the outrageous, unprecedented and potentially dangerous statements by Donald Trump will find that the log fills up fast. You have to keep buying new logbooks.

It's not funny anymore.


On Wednesday, the candidate broke new ground. He threatened his own party and the city of Cleveland with violence if he doesn't get his way.

Trump told CNN that, if he arrives at the Republican National Convention with a substantial delegate lead but something short of the requisite 1,237, "you'd get riots" if he were not automatically anointed as nominee.

Trump elaborated: "I think you would have problems like you've never seen before. ... I wouldn't lead it, but I think bad things would happen."

Let's be clear. Trump wasn't talking about what would happen if he wins the nomination fair and square but is wrongly denied the fruits of his victory. He was talking about what would happen if he comes up short. He expects to be handed the nomination even if the rules say he doesn't have it. And he has brazenly planted the idea of riots on his behalf if party leaders don't kneel before him.

I know there are pressing problems right here in Connecticut. Disastrous budget problems at both the city and state levels and ruinous rescissions that will fall hard on people with mental health, addiction and developmental problems.

But there might be something more important happening. Those comparisons to the rise of Hitler and Mussolini seemed, to me, a little high-strung last fall. Today, they are impossible to ignore. Trump has announced that he does not consider himself bound by rules and that he considers mob violence a non-lamentable option.

Again, let's be clear. Trump was reacting to chatter among Republicans looking for ways to slip out of this snare and specifically to ex-Speaker John Boehner's declaration that the party should draft Paul Ryan on the second ballot. Trump's message wasn't cloaked. It was: Try something like that, and my people will tear — at minimum — Cleveland apart.

This is new. It's new for a candidate to advocate violent reprisals from the podium and get them. President Barack Obama has grown accustomed to loud disruptions when he speaks. Nobody gets kicked or punched.

It's a tough time to be a Republican. For people heavily invested in the party, there aren't many good possibilities, and the one that looms larger with each passing day, like a pirate ship on the horizon, is departure, realignment, the formation of a third party to block Trump. Believe it or not, I have Republican friends here in Connecticut, and I do empathize with the pain it would cause them to leave their party, even temporarily, to fight against Trump. They weren't brought up to do something like that, but they might have to do it anyway.

This man will drag us down with him. In the last few weeks, there has been a rash of reports of high school students chanting slurs at teams with minority players. In Newton, Mass., Catholic students shouted, "You killed Jesus" at players from a heavily Jewish school. Here in our state, Farmington students chanted "SAT scores" when their girls' basketball team lost to mostly black Capital Prep. In Iowa and Indiana, basketball fans removed all doubt and chanted "Trump" or "Build a Wall" while (in Indiana) waving a picture of the candidate at racially diverse teams.

We have some good Republican leaders here in Connecticut. It's time for them to speak, with the primary five weeks away. "I'm staying neutral" doesn't wash anymore. Mark Boughton, J.R. Romano, Themis Klarides, Len Fasano, Joe Markley, Rob Kane, John Kissel, Toni Boucher, Kevin Witkos. You're good people. I know many of you. Maybe it's time to assemble in one place for a press conference to tell Trump what he can expect, in the form of delegates, from our state.

The words have already been scripted for you. It's what Michael Corleone says to Sen. Pat Geary: "You can have my answer now, if you like. My offer is this: nothing."

OK, maybe you should quote somebody more lofty than Michael Corleone. But the message is clear, right? April 26, he gets nothing.
