'Evil is here.' DeWine, Vance, Husted, Yost need to speak against extremists| Dale Butland

Dale Butland was press secretary and Ohio chief of staff to the late U.S. Senator John Glenn

To borrow a line from "Brokeback Mountain," mainstream Republicans can’t quit Donald Trump.

With a few notable exceptions, they’ve been political invertebrates, excusing or downplaying the former president’s racism, bigotry, and xenophobia and — despite his multiple assaults on decency and democracy — invariably refusing to criticize him by name.

Not when he insisted that the nation’s first Black president was born in Africa, described Mexicans as “rapists and murderers” or called for a “Muslim ban.”

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Not when he concocted his Big Lie about the 2020 election, sought to overturn the results, and mobilized a mob to attack the Capitol.

And not even now as he announces another campaign for president, pledges to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and — as he unbelievably did on December 3 — calls for the suspension of our Constitution.   

Small wonder Trump had no qualms about hosting a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for two well-known anti-Semites.  

One was Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and self-described “Christian nationalist” who, along with denying the Holocaust, also denies women should have the right to vote.

The other Ye (formerly known as Kanye West), the rapper whose recent threat to “go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” caused Adidas and his own talent agency to sever ties with him.

When the predictable firestorm erupted, Trump professed ignorance about Fuentes, and blamed Ye for having brought him to Mar-a-Lago.

But Trump couldn’t plausibly deny knowing Ye, having hosted him at a well-publicized White House photo-op in the Oval Office.

Not a complex issue

Which prompted Jewish media personality Ben Shapiro to tartly observe: “A good way not to accidentally dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you don’t know is not to dine with a vile racist and anti-Semite you do know.”

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Silly Ben.

Trump had no intention of distancing himself from Ye or his anti-Semitic poison.

"(Sic) we got along great, he expressed no anti-Semitism, & I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’” Trump wrote of Ye on his social media platform.  “Why wouldn’t I agree to meet (with him)?”

A few days later Ye doubled down, telling a right-wing radio audience: “I like Hitler... Hitler had a lot of redeeming qualities."

And then tweeted an image of a swastika inside the Star of David.

For a few Republican leaders, genocide and Nazi love was evidently a bridge too far--and they quickly pronounced themselves “shocked” and “disgusted.”

With Ye.

But not, of course, with the former president who has yet to renounce Ye or repudiate his comments.

Let’s be clear.

As the sky-rocketing number of slurs against Blacks, gays, and Jews on Twitter and other social media demonstrates, the kind of rhetorical filth that was — before Trump — confined to the fringes and shadows of our society has now been mainstreamed.

And as the ballooning number of mass shootings at shopping centers, synagogues and gay night clubs attest, hate speech has terrifying real world consequences.

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Where are Ohio Republican leaders?

No, Trump isn’t the sole reason for all this.

But does anyone doubt that the words of this former — as potentially future — president of the United States have coarsened our culture and emboldened those who advocate violence?

Simply connect the dots.

Trump campaigned in 2015 and 2016 and took office in January of 2017.

By 2018, according to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, white supremacists and anti-Semites had become “the most persistent and lethal threat” to America’s national security.

So why the continued radio silence from Ohio’s top Republicans?

Perhaps that of Senator-Elect J.D. Vance is understandable; Trump was indispensable to his nomination and election.

But where is Gov. Mike DeWine?

Or Lt. Governor Jon Husted?

Yo, Dave Yost.  Where’s our Attorney General? 

The 2022 election is over.

You won.

You don’t have to keep cowering in the corner pretending to see and hear no evil.

Evil is here.

Be the leaders you promised to be.

Dale Butland was press secretary and Ohio chief of staff to the late U.S. Sen. John Glenn

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What should be the response from Ohio lawmakers to extremist, Donald Trump?