John Kubal is a writer at the Brookings Register and a 35–year Navy veteran.

Family, friends and fellow Register newsmen have advised me that at times I have a tendency to overthink things. So think about that as you peruse what follows. Am I overthinking the title I’ve given this Corner?

By way of an alhaigian caveat I remind you, as I have in the past, that I’m no fan of Donald J. Trump. I consider him a dangerous man and a threat to the future of our democratic republic. 

In the wake of Trump’s losing the election of 2020, I suggested it was time for the Republican Party to have a come-to-Jesus meeting with Trump. Time to tell the Donald it was time to get on board with the GOP and become part of it. That never happened.

In what has turned out to be an incredible lack of courage on the part of many Republican leaders, they failed to bring him back into the GOP fold — then to compound that lack of courage, those same leaders abandoned much that the GOP at one time stood for and joined the PODJT (Party of Donald J. Trump). The GOP with its proud history is gone today, replaced by the PODJT.

Without going into a who-won/who-lost look at the recent vice-presidential debate, I credit Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) for noting that former Vice President Mike Pence should have been standing onstage debating Walz rather than Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio). Pence’s profile-in-courage stance by doing his duty and standing against Trump’s urging him to mess with the counting of electoral college votes did not endear him with DJT, who hoped his VP could somehow keep him in the Oval Office.

Seventy years ago this past June, in a nationally televised hearing, Red hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) took on the U.S. Army, charging lax security at a top-secret Army facility. Boston attorney Joseph Welch defended the Army; McCarthy counterattacked, alleging that one of Welch’s attorneys had ties to a communist organization.

Welch came to his colleague’s defense with the words that were McCarthy’s political death knell: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” When McCarthy tried to continue his counterblows, Welch angrily landed a knockout punch: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

Could the above question be posed to former President Donald J. Trump, whose ad hominem attacks against men and women — in both parties — who he sees as political enemies were as vicious as McCarthy’s? In one of his frequent vitriolic outbursts, Trump called Kamala Harris a “monster.”

And when Trump does level such attacks, why do GOP leaders not take him to task? Where is their courage?

I lifted the above scenario from a U.S. Senate website that addressed “… the three-month nationally televised spectacle known to history as the Army-McCarthy hearings.” One piece of history that I would hope our senators and House members on both sides of the aisle are familiar with.

Can any of you solons who call yourselves Republicans and who are parents look a son or daughter in the eye and tell them that your standard bearer is the pride of your party? He’s a gentleman, with the nicest sense of personal honor? Give me one example.

I can only hope that federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle were given some basic instruction in the history of the United States of America during their formative years. I would also hope that during their post-graduate years of education their view of America and the politics of American history became more sophisticated, especially in view of the elective offices they assumed.

Did they not during the eight years total of the Trump and Biden administration see all the good, the bad and the ugly of American politics and its history and learn from that?

I hope they are at least familiar with the U.S. Constitution and its demand of them: to protect and defend that document against all enemies — foreign and domestic. Consider the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, as a domestic assault on our nation. I find it nigh unconscionable that any American can look at all the spoken, written and recorded visuals of what happened that day and deny it happened. Wasn’t the whole episode a living lesson in one of the darker sides of American history? Hardly a positive day for Donald Trump … and yet?

For anyone looking for a more positive view of the former president, there is a book out there by former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee. It presents a flattering  — albeit a bit shaky — view, in my eyes: “The Kid’s Guide to President Trump, 2024 edition.” I quote below a short piece from the book that sheds some light on those pesky people who can’t get the Trump story right.

“The mainstream media has been no friend to President Trump, and they’ll never admit that he did a great job leading our country and making the changes that America needs. But as future voters, our children and grandchildren deserve to understand the truth about Donald Trump, what makes him a great president and hear his plan to reclaim the presidency in 2024.”

That’s for starters; other “Kids Guide Books To” include: “Media Bias and Fake News”; “Fighting Socialism”; “Free Speech & Cancel Culture.”

An Arkansas Times blog opinion notes: “Put out by EverBright Media, cofounded by the Huckster himself, the books are marketed to Christian schools and homeschool families, branded as anti-woke truth-telling to ‘help children learn all about important subjects that schools refuse to teach.’”

Heaven help us. Have a nice day.