Reality exposed
11th January 2021 · 0 Comments
By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Columnist
From the very beginning, I feared Donald Trump. While that may not seem an unusual position for a member of the editorial staff of The Louisiana Weekly, for almost 20 years I had served as a Republican voice within a predominantly Democratic newspaper. Nevertheless, I knew a danger to the Republic had come when I first saw Trump descend down his golden, gaudy escalator to announce his candidacy for president.
Still, it jarred me just two weeks ago when my WRNO radio co-host Hy McEnery asked me in all honesty, “Why do you hate Donald Trump?” After all, a Christian should not hate anyone, even those beneath contempt, and from a policy standpoint, Hy noted that this GOP president agreed with me more than disagreed.
“I know you don’t like the tweets, but WHY do you hate Trump so?” Hy wondered. I replied, ‘Because I feared the long-term damage that he would do to the Republic. Because I realized he would undermine confidence in our electoral system the moment that the vote did not go his way. Because, even as I literally prayed such a day would never come, I knew that a riot like January 6, 2021, would occur.’ Even I, though, could not imagine the president of the United States egging on domestic insurrectionists to storm the People’s House.
I should not have been surprised. In Trump, I detected a dangerous narcissism which I had witnessed before. David Vitter may have appeared more smooth and erudite, but he engaged in the hypocritical approach to public affairs that resembled Trump in spirit, if not always in practice. Unlike the president, Vitter portrayed himself as a paragon of political and moral virtue, and all others as failures in those regards. Yet they strangely paralleled one another. Stand on Vitter’s side, or face him as his enemy – to be ridiculed and eliminated. Voters who opposed him were traitors to our way of life. Therefore, take any action to win, for the nation was at stake! In other words, the two men seemed very different on the surface, and proved very alike below.
Unlike Trump, my opinions evolved on David Vitter, whom I liked – at first – as a young legislative reformer. I cheered his enactment of term limits and his push for fiscal responsibility. However, by the time that he ran for Congress, I began to suspect a certain moral absence. He pulled off a narrow 800 vote victory by simultaneously noting Dave Treen’s past support for Affirmative Action in the white electorate, and implying an opposition to it in the Black community.
It was a couple of years later that I learned that Treen had resisted the urges of staff to expose the existence of Vitter’s trysts with a known prostitute called Wendy Cortez (nee Yow Ellis). When I asked Vitter the truth of the matter, rather than confess or be calm in his innocence, the then-Congressman threatened to destroy all who suggested it. This response from the man who declared that he could never cheat on his wife during the Clinton Impeachment (and she threatened to remove a key piece of David’s anatomy should he).
The Louisiana Weekly published my story on the prostitute scandal, and this newspaper became the only news source in the Pelican State to continue to attest to its veracity. Ultimately, we were proven correct. Yet, the GOP leadership did not heed our warnings in time. Vitter’s arrogance ultimately damaged the Republican Party of Louisiana, and cost it the governorship. Anyone with eyes could have seen the disaster coming, but members of the GOP are noted for their political loyalty.
This blind fealty has saved Donald Trump time and again, just as it has betrayed the conservative ideological movement. Pollster John Couvillon of JMC Analytics outlined to this newspaper the comparisons between the Georgia U.S. Senate races on January 5, 2021, and those of the past two Louisiana Gubernatorial races. He was the only pollster to accurately predict a Democratic victory in the state, mostly, as he explained to The Louisiana Weekly, due to the fact that he correctly predicted that Black turnout would be strong – and that suburban educated voters would be turned off by Trump.
As he observed, the surprise cross-party suburban voting which happened here in 2015 and 2019 in East Baton Rouge and Jefferson parishes with affluent GOP electorate, particularly women, Couvillon suspected that the same pro-Democratic trend would occur in the Atlanta suburbs thanks to the out-going president. JMC’s polls predicted just what I feared that Trump would drive away five years ago. The voters upon whom the GOP depended came to be repelled by the man.
As long as Donald Trump remains a personal factor in American politics, the suburbs and the nation will drift away from the GOP, and no advantage in the electoral college shall make up the difference. The ego that Trump displayed in the last six weeks in refusing to concede the presidential race cost the Republican Party the one check in the U.S. Senate on the ambitions of the progressive left. Couvillon opined that Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue would likely have emerged victorious but for Trump’s refusal to admit that he lost a fair election two months before. As a result, some of his GOP base stayed home, and fiscally conservative swing voters were repelled enough to cross the proverbial aisle.
Not only did the GOP forfeit Georgia, but Trump’s ever-increasing narcissism endangered the faith of a large minority of the electorate in the very institutions of our constitutional republic. The loss “wasn’t” his fault, he claimed. Loeffler and Perdue were insufficiently loyal. So let’s have a rally to show that Trump is always right. From the president’s dangerous arrogance, the tragedy of January 6 was broadcast to the world, as the Temple of Democracy was despoiled.
Democrats should cheer Trump’s utter narcissism, one supposes, as it provided a clear means to their majority control – and one would be wrong. Such a pathway to victory destroys the electorate’s faith in democracy. My mentor taught me that a strong Republic requires two parties, committed to liberty, who fiercely and honestly debate the issues. I sat across a desk from the legendary publisher of The Louisiana Weekly for the first two years of my career as a reporter, and most of what I learned about journalism came from that African-American Republican.
Henry Dejoie taught me to watch for a fundamental respect for the people’s liberties as the measuring stick for every politician regardless of party. Not enough newsprint exists to recount the lessons I learned from that great man, and one of them was his pride in being a Republican. Henry Dejoie remained a registered member of the GOP till the day he died in 2007. And not just on the ballot paper. He saw that a vigorous defense of voting rights and equality could easily live alongside a pro-business, pro-national defense ideology. He knew the good that existed in the Party of Lincoln, even as he disagreed with its turn against Affirmative Action and its commitment to voter access.
He respected those who respected the Republic, and for the liberties for which it stood. He hated the arrogance of those who would deny the sanctity of the ballot box, and he would have hated Donald Trump too.
Christopher Tidmore hosts the Founders Show on WRNO 99.5 FM on Sunday at 8 a.m. and Monday, Wednesday and Friday on WSLA 93.9 FM/1560 AM, online at www.thefoundersshow.com.
This article originally published in the January 11, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
