RIP: GOP

From Huffingtonpost:

Republicans mourned the Grand Old Party after presidential nominee Donald Trump gave his acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention on Thursday.

Nicole Wallace, communications chief under former President George W. Bush, didn’t mince words after Trump spoke.

“The Republican Party that I worked for for two decades died in this room tonight,” Wallace said on NBC.

And again:

A small group of veteran Republicans who are die-hard Donald Trump opponents gathered Thursday evening to mourn ― and effectively protest ― a party they no longer recognize.

Meghan McCain:

The party I was part of is dead.

And so on.

Meanwhile, on the speech itself, here's NBC:

TRUMP CLAIM: My opponent wants to essentially abolish the 2nd amendment.

THE FACTS: Clinton has proposed gun regulations, like background checks to purchase firearms. Yet the 2008 Supreme Court decision protecting and individual's right to possess firearms also stated that the right isn't unlimited — and can be subjected to regulations.

TRUMP CLAIM: Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America's fifty largest cities. That's the largest increase in 25 years.

THE FACTS: Trump is correct that there has recently been an uptick in crime, including in some (but not all) of America's largest cities. But overall, violent crime is down significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, according to FBI statistics. And the current violent crime rate is lower today per the most recent data (365 incidents of violent crime per 100,000 people) than when President Obama first took office in 2009 (431 incidents per 100,000 people).

There are other places that find Trump equally fact-free:

• NPR
• Factcheck.org 
• NYTimes
• Andrew Sullivan
• Huffington Post

And so on.

Sad to see how low this once dignified party has sunk - but let's not forget, that by courting 2-3 decades of fact-free demagoguery (Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell, the Tea Party) the GOP has only itself to blame.

Let's hope we never ever see that again.