“Lock her up!” Don’t think you have heard the last of this. Trump last night:
I’ll tell you one other thing: she shouldn’t be allowed to run. She’s guilty of a very, very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run. And just in that respect, I say it’s rigged, because she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency based on what she did with e-mails and so many other things.
This is an obvious “birthing” of a new version of“birtherism.” His sizable cult of low-information, not very Breit-bots (perhaps as many as 50% of the patchwork GOP) has this concept in their teeth, and they aren’t going to let go. Whatever the situation in the Congress, the ‘Republicans” or whatever they call their collection of crazies, will dog-whistle this at every opportunity. Some of them act aghast at Trump’s antics:
Conservative Joel Pollack, has stated that the reason the "Birther theory" has caught on particularly among conservatives, is the weakness of the Republican opposition, stating: “In the absence of strong Republican leadership, some find the Birther theory a compelling, if desperate, solution. Yet it is ultimately a self-destructive one – not just because it is almost certainly false, but because it contradicts the essential spirit of the conservative movement.”
But, out of weakness, they will adopt this tactic immediately. More hearings, talk of impeachment, even bills of impeachment will be offered on a regular basis. Do you really think Mitch McConnell won’t try to use this if he still runs the Senate? Trump himself, who got into the birtherism game when he got serious about running for president, will have some sort of huge megaphone. At the very least, he will have a prominent seat at Not Very Breit, and possibly a white trash cable TV show, featuring the likes of Glenn Beck, Ted Nugent, Rush Limbaugh, and Gennifer Flowers.
ThinkProgress has a piece on this subject, laying out the historical background of delegitimizing women’s rights to participate in the political process.
Let’s not kid ourselves; America is in the swamp and it will take time to get out of it.
