Bill Straub: State Republican Congressional delegation changing tune in rush to support Trump

WASHINGTON – The great Tom Lehrer said it a long time ago: “Like lambs to the slaughter / they’re drinking the water / and breathing the air.’’

The lambs in this present instance are the Republican members of the Kentucky congressional delegation who initially reacted toward Donald J. Trump’s GOP presidential campaign as if they were driving past the old Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, an experience that could turn the stomach of even the most stout-hearted.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, who recently told those attending the Reason Weekend 2016 conference that those trying to label him as a member of Congress “have a hard time doing it’’ (a wholly inaccurate statement – it’s just people being polite) is the latest to fall in line.

Massie was quoted by CN2, a cable news outlet, earlier this month as following the all-too-familiar GOP office holder line that he will “support the nominee and I’m going to presume its Donald Trump,’’ which is rather like Socrates saying (personally translated from the original Greek) “I’m gonna chug that there glass of water and I presume it contains hemlock.’’ Back in October Massie cast Trump as “the craziest guy in the race’’ and “a big middle finger to Washington D.C. who is “nothing about substance.’’

Boy, how could you possibly not endorse someone with that curriculum vitae?

Massie, of course is not alone even though these lawmakers in the heart-of-hearts know Trump is as dangerous as undetonated atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert. Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Bowling Green, offered CN2 the same limp, lukewarm endorsement as Massie. So don’t be surprised when other apple-polishers, like Rep. Andy Barr, R-Lexington, blithely follow along and endorse the proven misogynist, bigot and liar.

The House members are simply tracking the route blazed by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, of Louisville and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, who earlier muttered the rather obvious notion that the New York real estate baron is the nominee and they will follow as he leads the party down the garden path.

McConnell checked his spine at the door even though his minions did everything conceivable to deprive Trump of delegates he earned at the state’s Republican Presidential Caucus in March and was quoted as telling other lawmakers that he will drop The Donald “like a hot rock’’ if electoral disaster appears imminent.

But Paul, of course, is the most interesting case. His once promising but ultimately farcical presidential campaign came to a screeching halt when Trump tossed whatever it is that covers his head into the ring and went out of his way to belittle the Kentuckian’s candidacy.

And what has our boy Rand said about The Donald in the past? Start with calling him “a delusional narcissist and an orange-faced windbag.’’

Oh, it gets better, friends.

“A speck of dirt is way more qualified to be president,’’ he said of Trump on Comedy Central’s “The Nightly Show.”

And the piece de resistance: “I’m not sure I would say Trump is Hitler – Goebbels maybe.”

Paul retracted that last comment — somewhat at least, Nazi references remain verboten in polite society — but it’s worth remembering that it was Joseph Goebbels, der fuhrer’s bunker mate and minister of propaganda, who basically invented the concept known as “The Big Lie.’’

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,’’ Goebbels is often cited as saying.

Now it’s probable, despite his constant harping that he’s the smartest guy in the room, that Trump doesn’t know Joseph Goebbels from William Goebel, the martyred Kentucky governor from the turn of the 19th Century. But his campaign certainly appears to center to a huge degree on the propagandist’s precept.

Trump’s entire campaign is based on whoppers, howlers, wowie-zowies and doozies that would stun the flim-flam man, masquerading as politically incorrect, telling-it-like-it-is straight talk that the establishment doesn’t want to hear but plays well with the great unwashed – as long as the great unwashed consists of white people.

Just a few examples:

• In March he said Congress had recently passed a budget “that is so bad. It funds ISIS.” The omnibus spending package that passed in December does not, of course, forward any money to the terrorist organization.

• Trump claimed that same spending bill “funds illegal immigrants coming in and through your border, right through Phoenix.” The measure simply doesn’t provide funds for undocumented workers crossing the border. It does fund U.S. Customs and Border Protection, charged with keeping illegal immigrants out.

• On March 16, appearing on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor, Trump said he never accused President George W. Bush of lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. “I didn’t say lie. I said he may have lied.” Trump said a month earlier that the former president had, indeed, lied.

• Whining that the other GOP contenders were ganging up on him, Trump asserted, “So many horrible, horrible things said about me in one week. $38 million worth of horrible lies.” The Tracking Firm, which keeps an eye on political ads, found that every Republican penny spent by Trump’s foes on TV and radio during the week beginning March 1 totaled $10.57 million. Some of that, obviously, wasn’t even directed at Trump.

• He has refused to release his tax returns, insisting it’s because he’s being audited. No rule or regulation prohibits him from releasing said returns during an audit and he can if he so chooses, release earlier returns that are not being audited.

• As the candidate who proposes that Muslims be prohibited from entering the country, Trump maintains the wives of the 9/11 terrorists “knew exactly what was happening” and returned to Saudi Arabia before the attacks occurred to watch their husbands on television flying the planes. The 9/11 Commission report confirmed that none of the hijackers had a wife, girlfriend or family member in the United States during the days or months leading up to the tragedy.

• He insisted the U.S, is “losing now over $500 billion a year in terms of (trade) imbalance with China” but denied he ever told The New York Times he favored placing a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods in retaliation. The 2014 trade deficit totaled $343 billion and a tape of the meeting with the Times confirmed his call for a 45 percent tariff.

There are literally dozens of additional examples and this list doesn’t even include the hum-dinger when he said “I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down’’ as a result of 9/11.

In days of yore, the good citizens of the commonwealth were rightfully suspicious of con men who rolled into town from New York City to offer, for one thin dime, one-tenth of a dollar, a glance at Little Egypt, with the alluring promise that she walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile.

Now today they’re this cheap hustler Trump’s true believers, lined up well beyond the Waddy-Peytona exit, dimes grasped firmly in hand, to get a gander at Little Egypt. And the leaders who warned that the show might not be all it’s cracked up to be? They’re pushing themselves to the front of the line.

Washington correspondent Bill Straub served 11 years as the Frankfort Bureau chief for The Kentucky Post. He also is the former White House/political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about the federal government and politics. Email him at williamgstraub@gmail.com.