Has there ever been a performance more contemptuous of the source material? Like where you could tell more readily that the actor was just there for the check?

All the think pieces are about Trump exposing the Republican party’s “secret” racist underbelly, which has only been secret from willfully blind rich white people. It’s ridiculous. Every damn election, there are these stories about why Republicans can’t get the minority vote, and every election some Republican incumbent or challenger says something containing the word “plantation” or otherwise implies black and Hispanic people are just too stupid to know what is good for them.

Yet somehow nobody noticed until now that the Republican vote and the racist vote, the Republican vote and the teabagger vote, the Republican vote and the “America first” vote, have been the same damn vote since the Civil Rights Act and GOSH I WONDER WHAT THE TURNING POINT COULD HAVE BEEN.

The real untold story of this election is that Trump didn’t expose the GOP’s secret affinity for racism. He exposed, held up and roundly mocked their fetish for power.

Donald Trump said Barack Obama wasn’t really a citizen, and Republican politicians lined up to cash his checks and tout his endorsements.

Donald Trump said women were fat pigs and sluts, and Republican politicians laughed it off as just Donald being Donald.

Donald Trump said, in order, BEFORE SUPER TUESDAY:

1. Mexican undocumented immigrants were rapists and criminals
2. We should build a giant wall across the Mexican border
3. John McCain wasn’t really a war hero because he got captured
4. Megyn Kelly was only mad at Trump because she was on her period
5. Mass shootings are just the way the world works
6. We need to register Muslims in a national database and ban new Muslim immigrants
7. A disabled reporter was ridiculous
8. Hillary got “schlonged” by Obama
9. Ted Cruz is a pussy*
10. The pope is “disgraceful”
11. Trump’s penis is huge
12. Protesters at his rallies should be beaten up

And Republican politicians all hemmed and hawed and said they didn’t condone it all exactly but they would support him as the nominee. After all that. Every “Dump Trump” effort and movement that tried to get off the ground got shanked by Republicans saying no no, we can manage him. He can pivot. We can handle this.

Until he refused to endorse McCain, Paul Ryan and Kelly Ayotte in their primaries.

Then, oh, then it was fucking ON. Twitter lit UP all of a sudden. Serious people started asking serious questions around about Wednesday.

What would happen if Trump just quit?

Could the party force him out? What were the rules? Could they … un-nominate him somehow?

Can’t we just get rid of him and run Mike Pence, Mitt Romney, Bob Dole, hell anybody else?

We were waking up parliamentarians and getting them dressed in the dark, this week. We were trying to find Robert to ask him about his Rules. Donald, you in TROUBLE NOW.

All future GOP presidential nominees, take note. Say what you like about a Gold Star family. Let your convention speakers yell “lock her up” about a former Secretary of State and First Lady. Imply you want to use nuclear weapons on anybody that bugs you. Our Republican leading lights won’t support you, exactly, but they won’t start rumors you’re about to be concrete-booted and tossed into the East River.

They’ll save that for when you won’t endorse them. They’ll save that for when you won’t help them stay exactly where they are, doing exactly what they’re doing.

That’s what matters to them. Not economics (hah), not the military, not small government, not even racism or meanness. Power is all that matters, and treason to the status quo is treason to the only principle that politics understands.

(And yes, Bernie and the DNC. With the NOT AT ALL IRRELEVANT CAVEAT of that fight being about who is best equipped to manage income inequality and world instability, and not who hates immigrants more.)

So enough with the idea that Trump has laid bare the secret heart of the Republican party by having white nationalists yell unhinged shit at his rallies. If I see that NYT video one more time I’m gonna Elvis my laptop. They’ve been saying THAT shit for years. The misogynistic Hillary shit started during Bill’s first term. That KFC joke is almost as old as I am. This is what they have always been like under their skins.

The only news out of this week is that no matter who you hate and how much you hate them, when Paul Ryan comes for your endorsement you’d best give it to him.

A.

*This is actually the nicest thing anyone said about Ted Cruz during the primaries.