Lest someone think our ire over the Democrat’s actions during the Kavanaugh hearings have now caused us to support Trump’s Republicans let us state nothing could be farther from the truth.  Bad actions by one side doesn’t excuse the thoughtless ones of the other.  We know some Never Trumpers have loudly voiced support for voting Democrat in order to weaken Trump.  Big loses for the Republicans would be seen as a repudiation of Trump and pave the way to their ascendancy.  Just how giving power of any kind to a party where the principles due process and the presumption of innocence are replaced with its more politically expedient to believe an accuser.  Hundreds of years of developing the principles underlining our civil rights tossed aside for possible short-term gains. Joe Biden put it best when he said, “The question is not who Donald Trump is. America knows who he is. The question is, Who are we?’  The abandonment of our basic principles while encouraging mob action isn’t an attractive alternative.

This doesn’t make Trump’s positions on free trade, immigration, entitlements and fiscal sanity any more attractive.  Moreover, his demeanor has only attracted imitation from the other side to the detriment of everyone.  We will always have disagreements, but demeaning others leaves wounds.  At home and abroad long memories will recall slights and name calling damaging us far into the future. Wild unsubstantiated accusations damaging good people’s reputations won’t be soon forgotten either.  As we have said the two major parties are much more alike than they would have us to believe and we now have them competing as to which party can be uglier.

So long as the more extreme wings of the two major parties can control their party’s agendas they can’t help continuing down these dead-end roads. Visible problems will continue to be ignored.  Until a new major party dedicated to real problem solving appears, we fear the situation will only get worse.