Donald Trump's insinuation that Second Amendment supporters might be able to "do something" to stop a President Hillary Clinton is part of a disturbing trend that is not without consequences. By blocking all sensible gun safety measures, the Republican Party has done everything within their capability to ensure that potentially dangerous people have access to deadly assault weapons. The Planned Parenthood shooter was repeating an unfounded GOP talking point when he killed three people last November.
This is a strategy Trump has used throughout his campaign: He stokes hatred and provokes violence. Then once a backlash ensues, he bluffs. Who me? Race-baiting? Leave it to Trump to visit Milwaukee right after its deep-seeded racial tensions blew up last week. He has spent his candidacy feeding racial grievances. The French ambassador to the U.S. was right after the Paris attacks; Trump is truly a vulture who basks in violence. What else would you expect from the man who hired Mobutu's adviser as his campaign strategist?
President George W. Bush's enormous foreign policy mistake led to the deaths and maiming of tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers, the destruction of a country and the destabilization of an entire region. Yet Republicans--including a Trump campaign adviser--have prescribed everything from Hillary Clinton being "locked up", "hung on the Washington Mall", or "shot by a firing squad" over her use of a private email server and a terrorist attack that occurred when she was Secretary of State.
In case Rudy Giuliani has forgotten, the September 11th terrorist attacks occurred while Bush was in office--that is one of the few things Trump has been right about. The Bush Administration overlooked repeated warnings of an eminent terrorist attack on U.S. soil, but you will not hear anyone advocating that the Bush Administration be punished for this or be tried for the subsequent war crimes they committed. Instead, it is Hillary Clinton that voters deem "dishonest", "criminal", and "untrustworthy" after years of Republicans mounting smear campaigns against her.
At the very least, the unwarranted hatred Trump and other Republicans are inciting against Clinton will hamper her ability to govern effectively by creating an impasse between her and Conservative lawmakers, just as happened with President Obama. From the very beginning, Republicans refused to cooperate with President Obama at any level, blaming him for the massive problems he inherited from President Bush. They were outrageously disrespectful to him from the start in order to delegitimize his presidency.
For the past four years, the Republican-led House has been one of the most ineffective in U.S. history. Their tactic is simple: Ruin government and then run on an anti-government platform, to the detriment of enabling government to improve people's lives by working efficiently. When they are not trying to block President Obama any way they can, they are advancing agendas against the common good.
The Republican Party passed draconian abortion laws while feigning to protect women's health, even though abortion is a very safe procedure in the U.S.; far safer than self-induced abortions are. Although numerous studies show that paid parental leave reduces infant mortality rates and has lifelong benefits for babies and families, the Republican Party has blocked it. Instead, they have championed an anti-family platform where new mothers "earn" their parental leave; a task nearly impossible for the working poor.
Against all evidence, the Republican's only response to our mass shooting epidemic is claiming that more guns are the solution. Why govern using evidence? Trump says, "I love the poorly educated." The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky described that the Republican Party "is a party of nihilism that has no desire to solve any social problem, holding the rest of us hostage to its craziness as the bodies mount." He said this in the context of gun control, but it resonates well for the entire GOP platform.
Congress did nothing to respond to the impending Zika public health crisis, as a result of their obsession with defunding Planned Parenthood and being completely ineffectual, forcing President Obama to once again take executive action. If he had not, once the Zika Virus had blown into the crisis it would have become without any federal intervention, the Republican Party would blame President Obama just like they did for Ebola, despite having systematically slashed funding for health research and disease prevention agencies.
Donald Trump will probably not win the election, but the disruptive, anti-government, and violently anti-Clinton sentiments he and the other Republican candidates have ignited will once again prevent government from operating as it was intended to for the next four to eight years. This is profoundly to the detriment of the American people.