Opinion: Republicans are bailing from Trump’s sinking ship. Can they stay away this time?

Before GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump commenced his most recent public meltdown over comments made by the father of a Muslim U.S. soldier killed in the Iraq war, he was riding a post-convention bounce high enough to raise concern that Americans might elect arguably a fascist as their president.

Finally, it looks as if prominent Republicans are starting to bail, convinced that their nominee’s ramblings against the Gold Star parents who spoke at the Democratic National Convention will weigh down the Trump campaign ship enough to sink it. 

On Monday, The Times editorial board said it was time for GOP officials to stop condemning Trump’s individual offenses as if they were gaffes and recognize that his “entire campaign is based on his ego, his intolerance and his disreputable world view.” The editorial board warned, “Those who will not repudiate him are on the wrong side in this battle for the nation’s political soul.”

The repudiations began in earnest after we posted the editorial Monday afternoon (and yes, I’m aware that correlation does not equal causation). The Wall Street Journal’s Brett Stephens, after warning that Trump risks bringing the Republican Party “permanent dishonor,” describes what he finds uniquely grotesque about the nominee’s callousness:

What makes Mr. Trump’s remarks so foul is their undisguised sadism. He took a woman too heartbroken and anxious to speak of her dead son before an audience of millions and painted a target on her. He treated her silence as evidence that she was either a dolt or a stooge. He degraded her. “She was standing there. She had nothing to say,” Mr. Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.”

In this comment there was the full unmasking of Mr. Trump, in case he needed further unmasking. He has, as Humayun’s father Khizr put it, a “black soul.” His problem isn’t a lack of normal propriety but the absence of basic human decency. He is morally unfit for any office, high or low.

On Tuesday morning, New York Rep. Richard Hanna became the first House Republican to pledge his vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. He wrote in an op-ed article:

In his latest foray of insults, Mr. Trump has attacked the parents of a slain U.S. soldier. Where do we draw the line? I thought it would have been when he alleged that U.S. Sen. John McCain was not a war hero because he was caught. Or the countless other insults he's proudly lobbed from behind the Republican presidential podium. For me, it is not enough to simply denounce his comments: He is unfit to serve our party and cannot lead this country.

Secretary Clinton has issues that depending on where one stands can be viewed as great or small. But she stands and has stood for causes bigger than herself for a lifetime. That matters. Mrs. Clinton has promoted many of the issues I have been committed to over the years including expanding education and supporting women's health care.

While I disagree with her on many issues, I will vote for Mrs. Clinton.

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Finally, President Obama (who isn’t a Republican but whose frank remarks, spoken by a sitting commander in chief about a possible successor, make them noteworthy) got straight to the point in a news conference Tuesday:

I think the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president. I said so last week, and he keeps on proving it. The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn’t appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, means that he's woefully unprepared to do this job.

And this is not just my opinion. I think what's been interesting is the repeated denunciations of his statements by leading Republicans, including the speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader, and prominent Republicans like John McCain. And the question I think that they have to ask themselves is, if you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him? What does this say about your party that this is your standard bearer? This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily, and weekly, where they are distancing themselves from statements he's making. There has to be a point in which you say, this is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party.

And the fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow. I don’t doubt their sincerity. I don’t doubt that they were outraged about some of the statements that Mr. Trump and his supporters made about the Khan family. But there has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn’t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world.

These denunciations are more pointed than anything we’ve read from members of Trump’s own party, but here’s the thing: They all sound familiar because similar charges have been leveled against Trump in the past — and by Republicans.

Remember Gonzalo P. Curiel, the U.S. district court judge presiding over the Trump University fraud case? Trump blithely dismissed Curiel as biased to the point of disqualification because “it has to do with perhaps the fact that I’m very, very strong on the border” and Curiel, a natural-born U.S. citizen from Indiana, “is Hispanic, I believe.” Nothing about that statement is qualitatively different from Trump’s insinuation that Ghazala Khan, who stood silently next to her husband at the Democratic convention, “maybe wasn’t allowed to have anything to say” because she’s a Muslim. Still — and despite a rebuke from House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who said Trump's comments on Curiel are “the textbook definition” of racism — the Republican candidate closed in on Clinton over June and July and briefly pulled ahead of her in the polls.

Trump’s previous obscenities would have killed any other presidential candidacy by now. He once called on the U.S. to kill the family members of terrorists. He declared Muslim immigrants categorically unwelcome in the United States. He speculated that journalist Megyn Kelly was menstruating when she asked him pointed questions about his treatment of women. He vouched for his, um, virility during a televised debate in a way that would have caused Teddy Roosevelt, the manliest man ever to reign from the White House, to blush. Each of these offenses deserve only to be noted, not rebutted.

And this was all before Republicans were out of options, when they had time to spare the country from their own internal turmoil. But each crass utterance that caused rational observers to prepare Trump’s political obituary only invigorated the campaign when it came to the polls. Members of the #NeverTrump movement appealed to fellow conservatives to save the Republican Party from the existential threat within; now, chances are you remember #NeverTrump because I just mentioned it. 

Today, Trump is the second-most likely person to succeed Obama as president, having ascended to his current position despite past denunciations and expressions of dismay and so on. If the recent past is any guide — and what better guide do we have than that? — our memories, especially Republicans’, are short enough to give Trump a decent chance of being taken seriously again.

Just ask Gonzalo Curiel.

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