Principles? Who Needs 'Em?

The Republican Party has succeeded in lowering their standards of morality to match the levels of the Democratic Left.

One Republican nominee supporter is pictured proudly wearing a T-shirt she decorated herself that proclaims, "Trump can grab my" with an arrow pointing to her pubic area.

The same Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity who led the Conservatives' rebuke of Bill Clinton's indescretions are now leading the Trumpologist Parade. We're all RepublicRats now.

Trumpology. It's a thing now, proving The Donald absolutely correct when he boasted, "I could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose a single supporter."

I can hear it now: the justification by comparison. "But Hillary killed FOUR in Benghazi!"

Because of the Trump phenomenon, Republicans will never again be able to claim higher moral ground. By nominating Trump, Republicans have admitted that they'll abandon nearly every principle for the win. What they don't admit is that whether Trump wins or loses, we've all lost the final vestiges of morality. Because, if we're willing to compromise some principles to get Trump elected, there's no limit to the compromises we'll make to ride along on the Trumpology Tour.

And, once we've traded in our principles to elect Trump, we'll be ready to accept the tyranny of anyone who is the "lesser of two evils".

Who needs principles when we can have Populism?

After eight years of Democratic rule by an autocrat giving liberals what they've always thought they wanted (Separation of Powers be damned), our nation is ripe for the Nationalistic Populism warned of by Plato and James Madison. See www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/madison-and-the-perils-of-populism

Abandoning principles of morality is the final symptom of dysfuntional Democracy. We've already jettisoned principles of a Constitutional Republic.

That's how we got here.

So, Republican or Democrat, pick your poison. You know you want to.