One of the most disturbing trends in this election cycle is how so few Republican office holders and candidates for office have distanced themselves from Donald Trump, a misogynistic, bigoted and thoroughly unqualified candidate for president ("The danger of Trump's rigged election talk," Oct. 17).
Contrast this to Frank Knox, who in 1936 was the Republican nominee for vice-president on the ticket headed by Kansas Gov. Alf Landon. Landon and Knox lost the election, but Knox agreed to serve as secretary of the Navy under Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, beginning on July 11, 1940, well before the attack on Pearl Harbor and at a time when the isolationist movement was at its peak.
Knox was vilified by Republicans for agreeing to serve in Democrat FDR's cabinet. He responded to their criticism by saying: "I am an American first and a Republican after that."
After Knox died of a heart attack on April 28, 1944, FDR praised him by saying that he was "a casualty of the war."
The only casualty in this campaign will be the Republican Party.
Marc Raim, Baltimore