The Republican Party is still the bitch of the most vile person to ever enter American politics

 A civil-case jury found the Very Stable Genius liable for sexually assaulting a woman. 

A man who wished to project even a modicum of honor, who had any desire to appeal to the sense of decency of the citizens whose votes he wanted, a man who had one subatomic particle of character, would have shown up in the courtroom to state what he knew in his heart to be the truth. Except that Trump's heart, to the extent he has one, knew that Carroll had the truth on her side.

No, he sat for a taped deposition. The one in which he was shown a photograph in which Carroll and his second wife, Marla Maples, both appear, and got them confused. The one in which he had these disgusting responses to his interrogator:

“She’s not my type… it’s not politically correct to say it. I know that, but I’ll say it anyway,” Trump said.

He later turned to Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.

“You wouldn’t be a choice of mine either,” Trump said to her face.

In the video, which was shown to the nine-panel jury, Trump was forced to rewatch the infamous leaked 2005 Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted about abusing his celebrity status to sexually assault women because you can “grab ‘em by the pussy.”

Kaplan, who kept her cool and didn’t respond to Trump’s repeated personal attacks against her, asked him if he felt that stars could actually grab women “by the pussy.”

“Historically that’s true with stars. If you look over the last million years, that’s largely true, unfortunately—or fortunately,” he said.

Kaplan followed up by asking if Trump considers himself a star.

“Yeah,” he acknowledged.

Still - and yes, you've seen this point made before at LITD, but the spread keeps increasing - he is overwhelmingly the Republican favorite among 2024 presidential possibilities:

The gap between former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in polling on the 2024 GOP presidential nomination has widened as both men noticeably step up their campaign efforts – both official and unofficial.

Trump surged to a 41-point lead over the governor in a poll of a hypothetical Republican field released Tuesday from Morning Consult. The lead is the largest ever seen in the survey, which has been regularly tracking potential GOP primary voters’ preferences since late last year.

Trump netted 60% of support in the poll, while DeSantis earned 19% – both Trump’s highest level of support and DeSantis’ lowest in any Morning Consult survey so far.

DeSantis has not yet officially announced his 2024 bid but is expected to do so in the coming months.

Other official candidates – including South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramasway – and those said to be weighing bids, like former Vice President Mike Pence, have been vying in the last several months for the very modest slice of support not lended to either Trump or DeSantis, with some fluctuations.

Trump’s lead in the Morning Consult tally is one of the largest seen so far in the still-early contest, eclipsed only perhaps by an April poll from Emerson that saw Trump up 61% to DeSantis’ 16% – a 46-point gap.

The polls are aligned with a general and persistent trend across reputable polls that has seen the gap between the two men continue to grow.

Unless you're up to your eyeballs in Kool-Aid, you have no doubt that

• He embarked on affairs with both Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal at a golf tournament in Tahoe while his third wife was home with their three-month-old son.
• He appeared in a Playboy Video Centerfold. 
• In various interviews with Howard Stern said his daughter Ivanka was a "piece of ass," said about sleeping with contestants in pageants he owned that "it could be a conflict of interest, but [is] the kind of thing you worry about later," and responded to Stern's assertion that he was faithful to his wife by asking him, "So you don't get it on with anybody?"

More generally, this is the guy who

• walked into a room at the Pentagon and told an assemblage of generals that they were "a bunch of dopes and babies" who "don't know how to win anymore."
• Dealt in a much more friendly manner with authoritarians and dictators on the world stage than he did with leaders of key Western allies.
• wiped out the beneficial effects of the tax cuts Congress passed during his presidency with his protectionist tariffs

There is no defense of this man. None, on any level.

The ate-up cult followers who show up at his rallies, put Trump bumper stickers on their cars and run Trump flags on their flagpoles are beyond hope. It's fool's errand to try to reach them.

The elected legislators who lionize him and have similarly dissolute personal lives are now a Republican feature, not a bug.

Other Republican elected legislators and prominent politicians - think Mitch McConnell, who, after having place responsibility for January 6 on Trump, responded to the question of whether he'd support him in 2024, said that if he was the GOP nominee, yes, or Kevin McCarthy, who is, rightly, receiving kudos for standing firm on wanting to negotiate with Biden about the debt ceiling, but who made the Mar-a-Lago pilgrimage mere weeks after January 6 - have shown that when push comes to shove, they are nothing but cowards and sycophants, are of no use.

The public intellectuals who unequivocally got on his bandwagon - Roger Kimball, Victor Davis Hanson, Bill Bennett, Charles Kesler, etc. - have completely delegitimized their previous contributions to our societal discourse.

Townhall, RedState, The Federalist and American Greatness have ruined the whole idea of fusionist conservatism, perhaps irreparably. 

The Bulwark, Principles First and the this-means-we-have-to-vote-Democrat crowd generally have drifted from any kind of original mission that remembered what conservatism was prior to 2015.

Which brings me to the matter that will surely be my principal point of engagement with my fellow citizens on a political level going forward. Good-intentioned people - those who I know personally and those with whom I find myself engaging with online - will respond, as they have since 2015, with the question, "What is the country to do, then? We're only going to have two choices in the next election."

 There is a third choice. Stay home on election day. It's a choice I've made a couple of times now. 

Your soul is involved here. There are no stakes for the country high enough to compel one to vote for either of two parties that are equally rotten.

Yes, I am aware of how poisonous ESG and DEI are. I'm aware that Biden is administering an opiate to the country by not having a word to say about the relationship between the looming debt/deficit crisis and the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare. I'm aware that the Democrat push to have all petroleum-powered vehicles off the road in less than a decade is not only tyranny but economic madness. I'm aware that our cities are being consumed by murder and addiction.

But the Republican Party is of no use as a countervailing force. 

It doesn't give a flying f--- about character, the essential element for any restoration of a truly conservative proposal for reviving post-America. 

To those who would say, "There are a lot of local-level Republicans with good hearts who are trying hard to improve their communities," I would say, "Look each one of them in the eye and ask them the question that Mitch McConnell answered so abysmally: If Trump's the nominee, are you going to vote for him?"

I'm thinking about character a lot these days. I'd like to learn more about how to cultivate it in myself. This is a subject I intend to explore in my next Precipice post.

But I had to get this reaction to the present political moment off my chest, and I thought LITD was the appropriate venue for that.

Nothing about our political life is any better than it was eight years ago.

It keeps getting worse.