Opinion: Republicans made Trump a political star. They don’t deserve sympathy now.

To the editor: Kudos to Jonah Goldberg for pointing out where the Republican Party has gone astray. (“Trump wants the star treatment with women. He certainly gets it with the GOP,” Opinion, Oct. 10)

Donald Trump is not the cause but the result of this once unified but rational conservative party catering to the xenophobic, homophobic, Bible-thumping, undereducated Rush Limbaugh followers who find themselves more and more isolated from the world. The Republican civil war will continue after Trump is gone.

We can only hope for a good outcome, but that would take courage and self-reflection.

Arthur Strauss, Irvine

..

To the editor: Goldberg got it right in August when he wrote that “Republican candidates at this stage have no excuses to offer if they decide to repudiate Trump other than naked self-interest.” But now, in this week’s otherwise superb column, he repudiates his prescience, submitting that “the ‘grab them’ tape was shocking enough that many discovered their integrity.”

Nice try, but it’s too late to give GOP candidates cover. They didn’t experience sudden ethical epiphanies. Instead they sensed an urgent need to affect pious displays of integrity, so as to scrub voter memories of how they’d backed an egregiously flawed presidential nominee.

Such come-lately displays of piety betray calculated political maneuvering, not redemptive reformation.

David Schaffer, Santa Monica

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook