We’re down to the last month before the election, when America will finally conclude its political limbo contest.  The question on everybody’s mind is, how low will they go?

They’ve already gone so low that they are subterranean. But if last week is any indication, and if Donald Trump makes good on his promises, we’re going to burn a hole right through the solid inner core of the earth, or down to the depths of the fiery under world of Lucifer himself. (It feels like we’re already there.)

In the meantime, all Hell is breaking lose in the Republican Party, with all kinds of senators and representatives bailing on Trump, offended by his hate filled and misogynistic rhetoric.

This is, of course, all bullshit. The Republican Party shouldn’t be surprised or shocked by Trump.  After all, they created Trump – they are responsible for his being thrust on the American people. He represents everything the Republicans have stood for for more than twenty years now.

In 1994, running on Newt Gingrich’s “contract with America,” a well-organized Republican party won control of the House of Representatives. It was smack dab in the middle of Bill Clinton’s first term, and the landslide victory seemed to send a message to Clinton that his time was limited, and the country had moved to the right. Step aside, Slick Willie, we’ll be saying goodbye to you in 1996.

But then something happened.  Clinton, it turned out, was a political genius.  He stymied the Republicans by … becoming a Republican.  Well, I exaggerate slightly, but Clinton frustrated Gingrich and company by scrapping Hilary’s health care reform, and instituting welfare reform and NAFTA.  When Gingrich threatened to shut down the government, Clinton replied, “Go ahead.”  Gradually his approval ratings increased and in 1996, he was re-elected.

This is when the Republican Party first revealed its Achilles heel: they take things too personally, and get lost in their lust for revenge.  Infuriated by Clinton’s theft of their thunder, they became what they remain today:  the “investigation” party. It started with an investigation of Bill and Hilary’s big real estate “scandal” called Whitewater (remember that one?).  They were unable to uncover any wrong doing by the Clintons (including the bat-shit crazy theories that they’d murdered Vince Foster), so, with time and money running out, they shifted the investigation to the breaking news that Bill Clinton had received blow jobs from Monica Lewinsky. The press went nuts at the lurid details, and the Republicans impeached Clinton on charges of perjury, that he had lied under oath about his affair.  We were treated to months of testimony about a stained dress, what the meaning of the word “is” is, and so on and so on.  Clinton survived the impeachment, and his approval ratings actually went up as the proceedings dragged on.  Meanwhile, the economy, fueled by the dot com explosion, was doing terrifically well.

Then in 2000, Al Gore ran probably the worst presidential campaign ever, distancing himself from Clinton’s indiscretions and in the process distancing himself from the booming economy. Despite all of this, he still won the presidency but then lost it to a partisan and political ruling by the Supreme Court.  With Republican control of the executive and then the legislative branches, we suffered through eight years of corruption and incompetence, soaring debt, and political cronyism.  We found ourselves bogged down in two wars that quickly became quagmires. The Patriot Act and Citizens United both attacked individual rights

But congressional investigations were either suppressed or didn’t exist. Lies made by the administration based on faulty intelligence went unchallenged. Torture conducted by Americans at Abu Ghraib went unpunished. There was the horrible treatment of veterans at Walter Reed, and the sending of American soldiers into war without proper body armor.  All of this was left unquestioned.

The Bush administration ushered in the Great Recession and enabled the criminal activities on Wall Street, resulting in the greatest government bailout ever. We narrowly averted global economic collapse.  Yet any investigations were quiet and ineffective, and to this day, not one day of jail time has been served by those responsible for such greed and avarice that manifested itself in the theft of millions of dollars from every day citizens.

Then in 2008, President Obama was elected, and the hatred and vitriol from the Republicans spilled over. They couldn’t find any scandals to prosecute him on, so they tried to create a few. None of them gained enough attention to warrant any investigations, but they were determined not to recognize the legitimacy of his presidency.  From shouting “you lie” during a State of the Union address to the Senate Majority leader saying his number one goal was to make Obama a one-term president to government shutdowns to a refusal to confirm or deny his most recent Supreme Court Nomination, the legislature has been doing very little governing and a whole lot of obstructionism.

Then there was the ridiculous assertion that he is secretly a Muslim. Or the one where Michelle is actually a man and the first couple is also the first gay couple, and that their children were kidnapped into their roles as daughters. And, of course, there was all the nonsense about his birth certificate, from which Donald Trump the candidate was born.

And, since she was the Secretary of State and presidential hopeful, there had to be more investigations of Hilary Clinton.  She was the target of the Benghazi investigation into the four Americans killed at the embassy, despite the fact that 60 Americans at 13 different embassies were killed during the W. presidency, with no investigations.

There was the FBI investigation into the private server.

I doubt that there has ever been as many tax payer dollars spent on as many investigations as has been spent on the Clintons. Yet none of the investigations resulted in charges or indictments.  It’s not like the Republicans haven’t had the appetite for indictments. It’s obvious that they have wet dreams at night about the Clintons behind bars.

So now they are stuck with Trump. It’s sickening to see the party establishment act all noble and talk about trying to be “statesmen” when opposing Trump and his rhetoric.  They are trying to convince us that Trump is an exception to the norm of the Grand Old Party as the party of dignity and family values.

I’m sorry, but that dog won’t hunt.  At least not with the Republican Party of the past twenty five years.  The “Grand Old Party” has become the party of racists, religious zealots, and deplorable morons (that’s right, any “Evangelical” who still supports Donald Trump after everything he’s said and done has to be both deplorable and a moron). The “establishment” didn’t complain when this constituency voted them into office. They didn’t complain when they spent billions of taxpayer dollars on trying to, as Trump so eloquently puts it, “put her (Hilary) in jail.” They have openly defied their constitutional duties to either confirm or deny a Supreme Court appointment – so they can’t complain about the many constitutional abuses that Trump so ignorantly extolls.  They haven’t passed any meaningful legislation in two terms, even though they’ve voted to repeal Obamacare more than fifty times.  But now, suddenly, with Trump dragging them down, they become the respected statesmen that are horrified by the rhetoric Trump espouses.  Their outrage is exceeded only by their hypocrisy. We can’t let them off so easily – they are the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

It’s beginning to look like Hilary has a good chance of winning this thing (although I’m still not convinced Trump won’t come back – it seems the more unhinged he becomes, the more people vote for him) – so let’s assume for a moment that happens.  And let’s assume congress retains its current form.  That means at least two more years of Republican obstructionism.  And if they couldn’t overcome their inherent racism to show proper respect to the first black president, how do you think they’ll treat the first woman president?  We need look no further then the trumped-up (pun not intended) Benghazi hearings to answer that question.

Nope, if Hillary wins, it’ll be back to business as usual within days. Unless…

Unless the Democrats win control of both the Senate and the House. It’s just about the only hope we have to prevent a repeat of 2016 in 2020.  Bottom line – we need to throw the scumbags who begat the orange headed freak out before they procreate again.