Okay, my fellow Republicans: Are you not just a little concerned when the president of the United States spends an entire weekend sending out 52 tweets?
If Donald Trump had a job that required reading briefing papers and making national policy choices, would he have time to obsess over the late American hero John McCain? Oh, that’s right, he does have a day job – he’s supposed to be president not tweeter in chief.
My friends who are Trump justifiers tell me Trump is a “great counter-puncher.” If that is so, when since his death seven months ago did John McCain punch Trump?
My mother did not raise me to attack a dead man so I am mystified when the president of the United States does so. And in the last week it was several times.
McCain would be glad to punch back but he is in the Naval Academy Cemetery with hundreds of other war heroes. He can no longer punch back, but this retired National Guard colonel can.
I ask President Trump to apologize to the McCain family and the tens of thousands of New Hampshire Republicans and veterans who had such great respect for John we called him our third senator.
A real man would apologize, but an adolescent won’t do so. Let Trump’s response be the answer.
Could you imagine Reagan or JFK attacking a dead military hero? Or calling a senior staffer’s husband a “total loser” and a “whack job”? Can you?
Kellyanne Conway’s husband spoke of Trump’s “narcissistic personality disorder” after the bizarre tweetathon last weekend by someone who apparently has nothing else to do but prove he must be the center of attention 24-7.
For decades as a conservative I have found no reason to take the word of a Stalin, Putin or any other Russian leader. Yet so-called conservative leader Trump said last year that if Putin denied meddling in our elections he believed him. Really? What turnip truck did Donald Trump fall off?
If you, dear reader, believe what the former head of the KGB says then please write me at 14 South Street, Concord, so I can maintain a list of people to nominate for the Darwin Awards next year.
Or how about Ronald Reagan or either Bush saying they believe North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and that he “writes wonderful love letters.” Tell me you can envision them being naïve enough to take the word of a man who had his uncle killed and uses flamethrowers on prisoners.
Yet President Trump said Kim denied knowing about American student Otto Warmbier even being held in North Korea’s prison system. On Feb. 28, our president said, “He tells me he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”
Are you embarrassed yet? Are you the one who would believe Kim? Again, I need your name.
If Hillary Clinton said those words, we Republicans would be all over her. But our Republican officeholders in Washington are silent when Trump is childish enough to believe a Putin or a Kim.
I wish I had made all this up. But I didn’t.
The 31 percent base may be solid, but I believe we are still in need of 50 percent plus one to win an election. That trajectory is getting ugly.
(Chuck Douglas of Bow, a former Republican congressman, was ranked among the 10 most conservative members in the House.)