His View: Deplorables ... and all that jazz

It’s about time somebody came out and called Vivek Ramaswamy what he really is … scum. That description, courtesy of a rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, is a little disturbing. She, a South Carolina, Southern Belle, no less.

Perhaps it’s to be expected. After Trump entered the 2015 race, courteous Republican became an oxymoron. His rival, Ted Cruz from Texas, morphed into “Lyin’ Ted“ and the Senator from Florida Trump dubbed “Little Marco” to draw attention to his foe’s diminutive stature. Marc Rubio, not to be outdone by the likes of Donald, pointed to Trump’s “small hands” insinuating a correlation between a man’s hand size and what he packed below the belt.

Well, this ploy didn’t work out so well as Trump reassured a worried nation that he, indeed, was well appointed in that category. Why viewers of that televised debate should have believed anything spouted by the orange-haired congenital liar is anybody’s guess, but little Marco went down in flames and the Donald went on to the White House.

A strong argument could be made that outcome of that presidential contest was ultimately decided by which candidate would land the most scurrilous name-calling punch. In this regard, whoever dreamed up “crooked Hillary” should have received at least an ambassadorship in some inconsequential European capital, some place like Lichtenstein.

The beauty of all Trump’s slurs was that each carried at least a smidgen of truth. Ted Cruz was known far and wide for stretching the truth and even a casual glance revealed that Marco was gravitationally challenged. And Hillary?

Leaving the Whitewater scandal aside, Clinton just exuded sleaze. Not like Bill, “Slick Willy” who wore his sleaze on his sleeve. No. Hers was hidden well enough that I might have even forgiven her smoke-filled, back-room treachery denying the nomination to the one candidate who could whip Trump … ol’ Bernie. But that’s politics after all.

The spoiler for me was when she refused to release transcripts of two speeches delivered to Goldman Sachs for which she received close to half a million clams — each.

That did it. I still voted for her but held my nose while doing so. Katherine, a more loyal Democrat than even myself voted for no one for president that year.

Even while she was widely perceived as “crooked,” Clinton might still have pulled out a win if her team had been able to tag Trump with a moniker even juicier than “crooked Hillary.” That she tried and failed dismally is one topic of today’s column.

My pal, Joe, still chafes at being labeled “deplorable” by Hillary. That she described at least “half” of his supporters as “a basket of deplorables” served only to provide a hoarse rallying cry for all the snake handlers, flat earthers, dwarf tossers and hog callers that swelled the ranks of his supplicants.

Personally, I am not moved by such scandalous verbosity. Such speech is not only protected by the First Amendment, but is as old as our nation itself. John Adams, our second president, publicly labeled Alexander Hamilton, a “bastard brat of a Scottish peddler.” And who could ever forget Grover Cleveland being smeared as a “moral leper.”

Popular culture itself has taken the sting out of a host of sharp edged labels and we embrace anti-heroes with names like Dirty Harry, the Dirty Dozen and Inglorious Bastards.

With all this in mind, I am inclined to give Nikki a pass on “scum.” Just doesn’t rise nearly to the smear level of a “bastard brat.”

All this talk of campaign slurs takes me back, however, to branding millions of Trump cultists as “deplorable.”

A really bad choice of words. She could have made the same point by stating that a good many Trump supporters had views that most would say are “deplorable.”

In that memorable speech, she did go on to point out that, within this bucket, were racists, sexists, homophobes and xenophobes, but her most unforgivable mistake was in personalizing the smear.

The claim that someone has racist views is not the same thing as saying someone is a racist. The first is demonstrable, the second is mere opinion.

As this 2024 presidential campaign gears up I fear that Haley branding Ramaswami as “scum” will seem tame by standards a year from now. I can only hope that the Democratic Party speechwriters and spin meisters can deflect the worst of Trump’s slanders without themselves resorting to such grade-school, playground name-calling which has become stock in trade for Republican presidential politics.

And, if they can’t resist the temptation, I can only hope Biden’s handlers will do a better job than Hillary’s did seven years ago.

McGehee, a lifelong activist, settled here in 1973 and lives in Palouse with his wife, Katherine. His work life has varied from bartender to university instructor to wrecking yard owner.