'My monster has turned on me'

I find it amusing to witness the Republican party leadership bemoan the ascendancy of its presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Members of the GOP's leadership have called Trump a racist, a bully, and even a fascist, and decried his "hijacking" of the party.

Yet it is this same Republican leadership that has for decades now, with the assistance of talk radio and biased "news" networks, fomented racial resentment, promoted xenophobia, demonized intellectualism, and denied science.

This same Republican leadership has sought to delegitimize our nation's first black president by claiming he was foreign born. A secret Muslim. A Communist. They have stood mutely by as one of their members heckled the president as he delivered his State Of The Union message.

These same party leaders have worked to instill in many Americans a hatred of the very institution of government that borders on anarchism. They have shut down the government like petulant little children when they didn't get their way, and they have coarsened the public debate.

And now as they face a seemingly inevitable Trump nomination and a possible collapse of their party these poor Republican leaders stand, like Dr. Frankenstein amid the ruins of his castle, crying "my monster has turned on me."

Daniel Welch

Glen Ellyn