Rhonda Crutchfield: Trump the poster boy for right-wing extremists

I read with interest the July 29 column “Trump is the poison his party concocted” by Timothy Egan of The New York Times because it mirrored my own concerns about the status of the Republican Party.

Unfortunately, it is just reaping what it has been sowing for the past 20 years by allowing right-wing extremists to take control from the center-right mainstream of the party.

Just watch the vitriolic commentary on Fox News for example. The extremists play to the very worst side of human nature by exploiting peoples fears of the “other” – that is people who seem different with different beliefs and values.

I hope the Republican leadership will have the courage to finally disavow this right-wing rhetoric. This country needs a strong center-right Republican Party just as it needs a strong center-left Democratic Party to govern if we want to remain the greatest nation in the world.

This story was originally published August 15, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Rhonda Crutchfield: Trump the poster boy for right-wing extremists."