If All Your Friends Jumped Off A Bridge

Rebecca de Winter

"But mom, Bobby was drinking at the party too, and he's a straight-A student," says Johnny. Mom's response is classic if not predictable, repeated a million times through the decades: "If all your friends jumped off a bridge then would you too?"

While the Democrats aren’t always our “friends,” there are still a lot of Republicans eager to jump off a bridge with them lately.

We all know by now about Trump's lewd comments caught on a hot mic:


Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.


I'm not a fainting couch kind of a gal. I don't get the vapors over coarse language; I'm not offended by playful, even risqué conversation. I'm also well aware that behind closed doors, some men say lascivious, nasty things. I don't want to hear it, but I know about it.

That said, there is something about this tape that made me recoil, and I mean on a visceral level. I assumed most people would have the same reaction, especially fellow conservatives – and to their credit, most did. And yet, I see a surprising amount of them defending this, dismissing it as "locker room talk," "boys will be boys," "much ado about nothing," and so on.

"I can't believe people are offended that he said the P word," is one defense I see over and over and over.

Let's clear one thing up: I don't care that he said "the P word." There is probably no dirty word in existence that offends me. The more salacious, the more likely it will just make me laugh at the absurdity.

But Trump didn't "just say the P word." He admitted, on tape, that he "just grabbed it" – because, in his own words, he could "do anything." To miss the larger implication here, beyond just saying a dirty word, is to have the point go flying over one's head like an aerial drone headed for Julian Assange.

But enough about the puerile defenses. On to the truly brazen one, the nauseating "the other guy did it" song and dance. If I had a nickel for every tweet with some variation of the words "But Hillary/but Bill" in response to Trump's fiasco, I might not be rich – but I'd have a ton of nickels.

We all know that Bill Clinton is a sexual predator. Even the most die-hard liberals know this, deep down. And yes, they have played defense for him for a long, long time. We also know that Hillary played the enabler part to perfection, so greedy and power-hungry that she willingly trashed women without mercy. We know her “I’m for women” shtick is as genuine as the tenth anniversary of San Serriffe.

Here is what I want to know: isn't this what we have screamed and raged about for, well, decades? That the Democrats have allowed a sick, indecent creeper to not only exist comfortably within their party, but to elevate him to movie star status? Haven't we mocked them and scorned them for years, while Bill strutted around like a rooster to adoring, Roman-Polanski-at-the-Oscars style standing ovations?

So what gives, GOP? Why are some of you asking us to debase ourselves for so-called party unity? So many are saying "Bill and Hillary did this and worse." My response to this is simple. I don't care. I expect more of my party, and I hold them to a much higher standard. We all should.

The Democrats have long stewed in their cesspool of filth, making excuses and raving about the benefits of swimming in a scum-filled pond. I want no part of a GOP that tells me to drink a glass of curdled milk because the Democrats eat rotten cheese. Go jump off a bridge, if you must, but I’m staying right here.