October 24, 2017

The bizarre situation where only retiring Republicans will talk about Trump’s fitness for office

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/10/16447276/bob-corker-trump-world-war-iii
"Sen. Bob Corker’s warning that President Donald Trump’s recklessness could set the country “on the path to World War III,” issued in a New York Times interview on Sunday, is notable for a few reasons. For one, this is a critique that many Democrats and even some Republicans have made for some time — and that even more Republicans are said to make regularly in private. For another, this is coming publicly from a Republican senator in a conservative state who chairs a major committee, has worked closely with the administration, and has had strong relationships with several of its officials. So when he says he knows “for a fact” that there’s no “good cop, bad cop” act underway, we should take him seriously. But perhaps most noteworthy of all is that Corker only felt empowered to make such a bold critique after he had decided to retire rather than run for reelection in 2018 (as he announced at the end of last month). Only Corker’s liberation from the concerns of electoral politics, it seems, has motivated him to say what he truly thinks. His GOP colleagues in the Senate, though, are not so liberated. So though Corker has also asserted that “the vast majority” of his fellow Republican senators understand “what we’re dealing with here” — that they share his concerns about Trump’s temperament — most of them remain hesitant to publicly discuss the issue in public. Because of that reticence, the discussion about what potentially to do about a president who according to some is dangerously unstable has been choked off. So the seriousness of the dangers Corker is warning about — World War III! — doesn’t seem matched by a similarly serious proposed remedy. Corker’s plan A, it seems, is to hope that Trump will continue to rely on aides and administration officials who Corker thinks will keep his worst impulses in check. There doesn’t seem to be a plan B."