I ran across a rather apt description of the Republican National Convention:

…the flag, red, white, and blue, all its stripes, all its stars, and the flag a thousand times over, and Americanism until your ears ached…and Abraham Lincoln, mauled and dragged about and his name taken in vain, and his spirit degraded, prostituted to every insincerity and used as window-dressing for every cheap politician. The incredible sordidness of that convention passes all description. It was the gathering of unsanitary callous men who blasphemed patriotism, made a mockery of Republican government and filled the air with sodden and scheming stupidity.

That was written by Walter Lippmann in the pages of the New Republic…in 1916. It’s sad that it still rings true nearly 90 years later.