If there was Sherman’s March to the Sea during the civil war, there is now Republican’s march to bow-down to Donald Trump.

It’s a march to fall in line with a candidate that just months ago many GOPers insisted was a danger to the party, unqualified to be President, lacked common decency in his language and personal attacks, and could be (at the very least) risky to the nation. But if John Dalberg-Acton was correct that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” the sight of those with political aspirations acting out of a fear that their partisan viability could be threatened if they don’t get along to go along along can reveal intellectual corruption, the sheer worship of power over principle, foster voter cynicism and send a signal that, in the end, a party has no standards — and political norms are meaningless.

And so we see it in the morphing of the Republican Party into the Trumpublican Party.

There has been no greater symbol of the steady surrender (Bob Dole…Lindsey Graham and others) than how Florida Senator Marco Rubio has been steadily moving to assure all and sundry that he’ll be supporting Donald Trump. JFK wrote a book called “Profiles in Courage” which wasn’t a terribly long book; a “Profiles in Cowardice” about Republicans who put out the bugle call to warn their party and America about Trump but are now rushing to express support would require several volumes.

The latest is this:

Marco Rubio apologized privately to Donald Trump in person backstage before a Republican debate for crude remarks he made about Trump’s appearance, the Florida senator said in an exclusive CNN interview.

Meditating on everything from Trump’s rise to his fractious relationship with Jeb Bush, Rubio revisited nearly every turn of his presidential run in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper that aired Sunday on “State of the Union.” The former presidential candidate, who has grudgingly said he will support Trump in November, also admitted a series of mistakes that he says eventually bedeviled his campaign.
Chief among those, Rubio has said, was belittling Trump for the size of his hands in the leadup to Super Tuesday, which he has publicly said he regrets. But Rubio went further when speaking with Tapper.
“I actually told Donald — one of the debates, I forget which one — I apologized to him for that,” Rubio said. “I said, ‘You know, I’m sorry that I said that. It’s not who I am and I shouldn’t have done it.’ I didn’t say it in front of the cameras, I didn’t want any political benefit.”
Rubio, who told Tapper that he would be willing to speak on Trump’s behalf at the convention, did signal some respect for the man he has sharply criticized, praising him as “the ultimate change agent” and that he may be developing “perhaps a more comprehensive approach” on some policy questions.
Rubio recommended that Trump not drastically alter his approach in the general election.
“I don’t think he should change if he’s been successful,” Rubio said when asked about Trump dredging up scandals of the 1990s to attack Hillary Clinton, which Rubio said he himself wouldn’t do. “I may not like that direction, but at this point, he won and this is the direction that he won on.”

That’s a pretty big endorsement and pretty much jettisons Rubio’s brand — that he was going to somehow be a classier, more thoughtful brand of conservative. Hey, the ends does justify the means in politics, doesn’t it? Rubio learned that at the (little) hands of Donald Trump.

But then there’s more. When Rubio told Trapper, in effect, he’d do whatever he could do to keep Hillary Clinton from winning he in effect noted that he has no problem enabling white supremacists:

Florida Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio granted a hot exclusive interview to CNN’s Jake Tapper, revealing on Sunday morning’s State of the Union that he would be releasing his delegates to the Republican convention, casting his tepid support for Donald Trump as a lesser evil than voting for Hillary Clinton, and reflecting on his own failed campaign. Tapper repeatedly pressed Rubio on some of the more disturbing aspects of Trump’s candidacy, including the vocal support he has garnered, and at times reciprocated, from white supremacists.

Rubio expressed the sort of displeasure you’d expect from someone who sat through the season two premier of Wayward Pines, but in the end, took a tautological view of Trump’s white nationalist backers…

His response about white nationalists backing Trump? “It is what it is.”

The result? Apart from confirming the charges of some that Rubio was a spineless-political jellyfish, it confirms much of what Trump charged about Rubio during the campaign. The Washington Examiner notes:

Rubio’s assaults on Trump during the primary season were about more than “policy differences.” In addition to repeatedly calling Trump a “con artist,” Rubio: predicted that a Trump presidency would bring “chaos”; said Trump was “wholly unprepared to be president”; and warned about handing over control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to an “erratic individual” and a “lunatic.”

Rubio’s assaults on Trump during the primary season were about more than “policy differences.” In addition to repeatedly calling Trump a “con artist,” Rubio: predicted that a Trump presidency would bring “chaos”; said Trump was “wholly unprepared to be president”; and warned about handing over control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to an “erratic individual” and a “lunatic.”

On an even more fundamental level, the Trump phenomenon represented something that Rubio portrayed as being deeply threatening to the fabric of the nation. As a politician, Rubio rose to stardom by pushing an inspirational message that invoked the sunny optimism of Ronald Reagan, and applied it to a new electorate. In contrast, Trump’s candidacy has thrived from the anti-establishment anger sweeping the Republican electorate.

As Rubio’s campaign neared its conclusion, days before his embarrassing defeat to Trump in his home state of Florida, an emotional Rubio lamented to reporters about violence at Trump rallies, suggesting that it was important to “look at the rhetoric coming from the front-runner in the presidential campaign. This is a man who in rallies has told his supporters to basically beat up the people who are in the crowd and he’ll pay their legal fees.”

When everybody who is angry merely says and does whatever they want, Rubio said, “the result is it all breaks down. It’s called chaos. It’s called anarchy. And that’s what we’re careening toward in our political process.”

He warned of real life consequences to Trump’s rhetoric.

“Forget about the election for a moment, there’s a broader issue in our political culture in this country,” he said. “And this is what happens when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of anger and bitterness and frustration.”

And, as the Examiner notes, Rubio had called the violence at Trump rallies a “frightening, grotesque, and disturbing development in American politics….We are being ripped apart at the seams. I’m sad for this country.” But now, it suddenly has changed. Now the number one goal is to help the party win.

It increases cynicism in our politics when politicians seem to be speaking from the heart, warn about the future state of the Republic, and then backtrack as shamelessly and without consequences as Trump has reportedly done from the days when Trump seemed more of a Democrat or moderate Republican. The Examiner is correct:

For all of Rubio’s high-minded talk, however, it seems that when push comes to shove, he doesn’t have the courage to stand up for his stated convictions.

….That is, far from being an inspirational moral leader, Rubio has shown himself to be more of an opportunistic politician with his finger to the wind. He latched on to the Tea Party energy when he needed it to launch a long-shot Senate bid against an establishment figure in 2010. He embraced the idea of comprehensive immigration reform in 2013 in the wake of a GOP “autopsy” suggesting it was necessary to win in a changing electorate, but then downplayed it as it became a hindrance to his presidential campaign. Now he’s desperate to reconcile his past words about Trump — from just over two months ago — with his political need to fall in line behind his party’s nominee.

For all of Rubio’s rhetoric about responsible leadership, he’s now willing to embrace a demagogue just because that demagogue has an ‘R’ next to his name. Trump, for all his faults, has managed to expose Rubio’s true character — and it is not pretty.

In fact, Marco Rubio was correct about Trump during the end of his campaign when he let ‘er rip.

The fact is, the tag line the Huffington Post’s editor Arianna Huffington inserts under all stories about Trump is indeed accurate:

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

UPDATE: Some Twitter reaction..

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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