We are one third of the way through this election year and it appears to me that the Republicans are taking on water fast.

While Trump’s approval numbers remain the very low 40s, a value that is dismal but not yet disastrous, closer inspection reveals that the level is only that high because of very high levels of partisan support. Move beyond the GOP member and Trump’s number crash. Republican politicians, including the man third in line for the presidency, are retiring in large number and the donor class has already written of the House as a lost cause. The Senate map is tilted unfavorably against the Democratic Party and while gaining a majority there is quite unlikely, places such as The Cook Report and Five Thirty Eight do not dismiss the possibility out of hand. As spring finally rolls into town major GOP players are sounding like what earlier would have come out of only Democratic lips. Rubio, a weathervane of a pol always looking to see where the populace is heading, has described the recent tax cuts as something that did not help the workers of America and Trump’s own former HHS secretary admits that repealing the Individual Mandate will raise people premiums.

In this midst of such political calamity when we look at the GOP what do we see?

The House ‘Freedom’ Caucus mutters of plans to yet fully repeal the ACA.

In Illinois an actual Nazi runs for congress as a member of the GOP. (Remember when Illinois Nazi was a punch line?)

In California the GOP Senate candidate is an anti-Semite calling on the USA to be ‘free of Jews.’

The Vice President refers to a sheriff who defied our court system as a champion of the rule of law.

Two trillion dollars or more have been heaped upon the nation’s debt.

And of course we have an Administration that has taken no action to counter Russia’s meddling in our elections. (There are some sanctions on Russia, but none are for the attempts to sway our elections.)

This rot in the GOP is more than simply Trump. Trump is an artifact of the rot not a cause. Some time ago the Republicans surrendered reason, principal, and morality in their quest for power, playing to the basest motivations of the electorate.

They are destroying themselves the only question in my mind is much damage will they wreck before the end?