Brother knows best

My brother Steve and I don't have much in common.

For starters, there's an eight-year age difference. He lives in Roseville with his pregnant wife and dog. My husband and I keep our three cats close to the central city. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, he's a money-minded Republican.

Still, we get along pretty well and can talk politics without resorting to verbal fisticuffs. He likes to tease me about Mitt Romney, I'm happy to serve as his personal politically correct fact-checker.

Ideological differences aside, however, my brother wants to make it very clear who's not getting his vote in 2016. The GOP, he tells me during a recent phone conversation, has to get far, far away from Donald Trump.

“He's the wrong candidate, for sure,” my brother said as we discussed Trump's offensive comments on Mexico, ostensibly made under the guise of immigration reform.

“The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems,” Trump said during an announcement for his political bid. “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. … They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.”

So far, Trump's talking points have stirred up a media storm—and they've also rocketed him to the top of the polls.

“I don't get it,” I said. “How can anyone take him seriously?”

My brother tried to reassure me that this would prove to be just a momentary bit of clowning in the three-ring circus that is politics.

“Donald Trump's an idiot—the GOP needs the Latino vote,” Steve told me. “We don't want anything to do with him.”

For once, I can only hope my brother's right.