"... far from projecting more gravitas, Trump seems bent on making a fool of every credible Republican who has stepped up to tepidly endorse him."

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COMMENTS: 
*  According to the media it seems that everyone in this country is either ultra conservative or ultra liberal. It always seems to be you are with us on everything or you're one of them. I cant be the only person that has liberal views on some things and conservative views on others and not feel the need to toe a party or ideological line on everything. Its time that we stop letting extremists on both sides be the only voice in America.
   *  Couldn't agree more. The vast majority of people are in the middle being assaulted by the uneducated fringes on the left and right. Normal people don't act like reactionary, uninformed loudmouths.
   *  ".... liberal views on some things and conservative views on others." I've used those same words in previous comments to describe my own take on things. I do think that a lot of people try to see things objectively and are truth-seekers. The extremists on both sides make things appear more divisive than they really are. I think our interactions with people in our "real" lives are the true gauge. Most people seem decent.
   *  There are many of us out here who are NOT party only voters....and many who are, like you stated, Conservative on some issues and moderate on others. However, we are not the ones running wild in the streets, or invited on talk shows, or paid the least amount attention from the "press". Moderate does not sell, outrageous does.
*  Shame on Trump to fight with everyone, call names Very unprofressional. DONALD TRUMP IS A RACIST.The world says so. He is very dangerous. He is running this campaign for HIMSELF only. Not for America. Trump cannot make America great. America is the greatest country. Trump will destroy the economy and ruin this great country. Trump will destroy the worlds economy. Trump is the greatest liar Look at Trumps record the worst. He had and has 360000 cases against him as a big fraud. Many Republicans do not know and need to read and do a fact check before votin g for this Liar, Racist, Bully. He has not paid several workers their wages, never paid taxes that is why he is not showing it or declaring. Trumps companies went bankrupt. He owes more than millions to several people. Trump is very bad and not fit to be commander of chief. He will loose.
*  These pathetic republicans are in it for themselves and only themselves. How in Gods name can John McCain endorse Donald Trump after he completely trashed him for being caught in the Vietnam war? Because he wants to be re-elected and is afraid of speaking up against this goon and having the base not re-elect him. And to me that is so gross and totally lacks character.
*  Remember he was the Chief Birther who had a team of the "best" investigators in Hawaii that could prove President Obama was not born there. He also flirted with the idea that Ted Cruz's father was linked to the JFK assassination. Or what about him flat out lying about not being "John Miller" his own PR guy, also willing to bet he is lying about being under an IRS audit to avoid releasing his taxes, the IRS can't confirm or deny this because of privacy issues. What about Trump University or getting busted by the reporters last week because of his lies about veteran donations.....Shame on the Republican party, shame, shame for allowing the party of Reagan, Lincoln to be hijacked by a racist ,bigot, con man...
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The black hole within Donald Trump
By Matt Bai, June 9, 2016

I’m no advice columnist, and normally I wouldn’t use this space for relationship counseling, but here’s a small bit of wisdom that I’ve offered to a few friends over the years and that might be useful to Republicans in Washington.

When you’re deciding whether to plunge into a marriage, don’t ever make the mistake of thinking you’re marrying the person your partner is going to become, once he or she finally grows up or finds that perfect job or stops making meth in the basement. The only person you’re marrying is the one sitting right in front of you, and while some people do improve over time, only a fool would count on it.

On second thought, this advice probably comes too late for the Paul Ryans and Bob Corkers of the world, who were exactly this foolish when they wrapped their arms around Donald Trump and said: “I do.” But you know, they never asked.

You see, Republican leaders saw Trump reaching out for an insider like Paul Manafort – who ran Republican campaigns back when balloon drops were considered high-tech – and started using words like “pivot” and “coachable.” They wanted to believe the boorish Trump was like a political Bob Dylan, able to go from freewheelin’ to born-again without missing a beat.

“I can be more presidential than anybody,” Trump promised. I can be a totally faithful husband. You wait.

But several weeks after “Never Trump” started giving way to “Trump, I guess,” this better, more sober-minded Trump was nowhere in sight. And then came the meltdown this week, after Trump said the Indiana-born judge in the civil suit against Trump University should recuse himself because he’s of Mexican descent and probably resents that the offspring of his ancestors are now going to be forced to build a giant wall at their own expense.

The problem with this statement isn’t merely its racism. It’s that Trump’s philosophy, if one can call it that, would negate the very idea that is America’s most important contribution to the advancement of humankind – that we are a citizenry defined by shared values, not by inherited identities.

In America, alone among nations, where you’ve been is not the sum of who you are. If Trump isn’t clear on that point (and nothing in his subsequent statements leads me to think he is), then he really has no business speaking to a social studies class, much less leading the free world.

In any event, Republican insiders now resemble Tom Hanks at that moment in “Apollo 13” when he realizes the capsule is adrift and the heat isn’t coming back on. The critical window between Trump’s effective nomination five weeks ago and next month’s convention is closing fast, and far from projecting more gravitas, Trump seems bent on making a fool of every credible Republican who has stepped up to tepidly endorse him.

“I’m with racist!” blared Wednesday’s New York Daily News cover, over a picture of Speaker Ryan pointing to Trump. If you know Ryan at all, you know that had to feel like a horse kick in the solar plexus. But less than a week after endorsing Trump, the party’s elected leader refused to un-endorse him.

Deceived spouses always throw good money after bad. It’s hard to look in the mirror and admit you were had.

I’ll admit: I, too, thought Trump was capable of broadening his appeal. I thought this not because I presumed he had some inner Ronald Reagan lurking under that crass exterior, but because Trump is, if nothing else, a masterful entertainer and diviner of the marketplace, a man with no discernible ideology beyond his own self-promotion.

I assumed he might approach the fall campaign as he would another reality show. I assumed the angry, xenophobic Trump was a persona, soon to be replaced by the reformist, independent Trump. I expected him to re-spawn, like in a video game.

But here’s the thing Ryan and I both should have understood about Trump, and that now seems to me the central fact of his existence: He is man tragically enslaved to his own neediness.

Most politicians are driven, to some significant extent, by insecurity – the need to be loved and to have that love publicly affirmed. (A rare exception, as I’ve written, is Barack Obama, who could stand to crave a little more approval from time to time.)

But for Trump, insecurity is not a manageable motivator. It is the black hole that consumes him.

He needs constantly to be talked about, admired, validated. He has an almost pathological obsession with ratings, polls, flattering profiles – anything that seems to call out, from the unrelenting darkness, “You exist and you are seen.” He talks about being a winner more than anyone I’ve ever met who doesn’t play with Pokémons or watch the Wiggles.

One of the more illuminating moments of the campaign, I thought, was when Trump told Anderson Cooper, in a CNN forum, that his father had warned him away from leaving Queens to do business in Manhattan, because “that’s not for us.” You could almost hear the voice of the father whispering, evermore: “We don’t belong, son. They’ll never accept us.”

Everything in Trump’s spectacular American story – the labeling of high-rise towers with giant, gilded nameplates, the impersonating of a media flak so he could gush about his own business acumen and sex appeal – has been fueled by this need to prove himself special and deserving. So has the improbable campaign that has now landed him at the pinnacle of legitimacy.

Our strengths are always our weaknesses, though, and what we should have known is that Trump can’t moderate it. The need is too much to overcome. Every criticism, every judgment, every potential obstacle seems to evoke in him a latent rage, a sense that the world – as embodied in Manhattan’s unbreachable elite – is condescending to him again.

Trump’s white, working-class supporters identify with this rage; they find it cathartic. And Republican leaders are loath to push those voters away.

But they also understand that the broader electorate will find the insults and bigotry increasingly reviling. The black hole, left unchecked, could swallow the party’s electoral hopes and leave no trace.

Here’s another psychoanalytical nugget I picked up years ago from a psychologist I knew socially for a while. She told me that however other people make you feel is always a reflection of how the world makes them feel.

No wonder Trump’s campaign seems bound to make us feel smaller and less worthy than we really are.
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