Lewis Donohue: Republican party has gotten just what it has asked for — and has McConnell to thank

“For they sow the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.” — Hosea 8:7

As it becomes more and more apparent that Donald Trump will become the presidential nominee of the Republican party in this year’s comedic dance, the party’s leadership is in a panic. How do they stop this blustering, boastful, billionaire who claims he can solve all the country’s problems, make amazing deals, and redo our treaties and trade agreeements, saving billions of dollars?

While Trump rolls on, ever nearer to the number of delegates required for the nomination, the “establishment” wing of the party — the old pros who have had a good time shutting down almost everything proposed by Barack Obama and the Democrats — expresses fear that Trump will destroy the party and do great damage to the country.

One of the ironies of the situation is that Ted Cruz is the person they are gathering around to draw enough votes away from Trump and keep him from winning the nomination before the party convention.

Cruz, a senator from Texas, has managed to alienate almost the entire Congress. Both he and Trump have been called fascists. If Trump is held off, the party may be able to nominate someone else entirely. The person most prominently mentioned as the replacement candidate is Paul Ryan, who also has been described as a fascist. Cruz and Ryan are ideologically oriented toward Ayn Rand’s version of fascism and Trump appears to be practicing it without being aware of what he is doing.

Meanwhile, the people have become so frustrated with the inaction in Washington, many Republicans (and some Democrats) have turned to Trump. When the election is over and some of the dire predictions start coming true, how long will it be before the people start pointing toward the person responsible?

Of course that would be Kentucky’s senior senator and Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, whose strategy for winning the elections was to shut down the Obama administration by defeating every proposal it offered. Bill after bill was defeated or bottled up. For seven-plus years, new records have been set on sessions with the fewest bills passed.

All this has brought about an unintended result and, as Paul Krugman puts it, the Republicans have lost control of the monster they have created.

Yet, after shutting down so many moves to put this country back on its feet after the carnage brought on by the Bush administration, Mr. McConnell blithely continues to block and even refuse to hear President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court (or at least that was what he was doing at the time this was written). He says this after he and many members of the party make unrealistic claims about “violations” of the U.S. constitution by President Obama.

Part of his defense is the Biden “rule” in which former senator and now Vice President Joseph Biden once opposed approving a Court nominee in the final year of a President’s term. I’m sure that under present circumstances Biden regrets his support of that position.

Calling Biden’s comments the Biden “rule” is McConnell’s pretense that it was a rule, just one more of his deceptions.

Many of us in this state know of his tactics but our citizens keep electing him, the most recent time because he was a defense warrior in the fictional “war on coal.”

But when the Republican party comes to realize his tactics have, at a minimum, caused much trouble for their party, and the country, maybe he will get his well-deserved comeuppance. I hope so, but I’m not confident that the wiley old fox won’t be able to wiggle his way out and shift the blame to Obama.

Lewis Donohew retired from the University of Kentucky College of Communications in 1999 after nearly 35 years of service and having earned a national reputation as a communications scholar and researcher. Now down on his farm growing grapes and living close to the earth, he contemplates issues of the day from a lifetime of experience and a love of the land.