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GOP needs to rein in Trump

THIS WEEK (and it's only Wednesday . . . sigh) Donald Trump has gotten much, much worse, and so has the Trump Effect on American civility.

THIS WEEK (and it's only Wednesday . . . sigh) Donald Trump has gotten much, much worse, and so has the Trump Effect on American civility.

By now you know all about "The New Furor" - as the Daily News, on the very first day of the rest of our lives, so aptly put it on the front page yesterday - over Trump's highly impractical, highly unconstitutional, and highly immoral call to at least temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the U.S., which would end the 239-year-old American experiment in religious liberty as we know it.

The chattering classes are in a tizzy, which probably means that Trump is about to rise another 3 to 4 percent in the polls, on the backs of his growing base of a low-information, xenophobic and often racist voting bloc that's larger than anyone cares to admit.

In case there's any doubt where this thing is headed, Trump's campaign co-chair in New Hampshire rationalized the proposed Muslim-to-U.S.-travel-ban by explaining it was "no different than the situation during World War II, when we put the Japanese in camps" - a reference to one of the ugliest and most unfortunate events in modern American history.

Meanwhile, two things happened in Pennsylvania, a state that was founded by William Penn to foster his belief in "liberty of conscious." In Pittsburgh last week, a Muslim cabdriver was asked by a passenger all about ISIS and if he was "a Pakistani guy." The passenger then said he needed to get his wallet inside his house but instead came out with a rifle, allegedly striking the driver in the back with a bullet as he attempted to speed away. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is calling for a hate-crimes investigation.

In Philadelphia on Monday, the FBI and other agencies began investigating an incident in which a bloodied pig's head was tossed at the front door of a mosque in North Philly, an act which prompted Mayor-elect Jim Kenney to say that "he bigotry that desecrated Al-Aqsa mosque today has no place in Philadelphia."

Kenney is right . . . and this week Pennsylvania has the perfect opportunity to say "no" to Islamophobia and to hate. On Friday at lunchtime in New York, as part of that bizarre annual tradition known as the Pennsylvania Society weekend, Trump is slated to deliver the keynote address at a major fundraiser for the state Republican Party.

The Pennsylvania GOP is charging $1,000 a head to hear the short-fingered vulgarian speak at the Commonwealth Club in Manhattan, and $2,500 a pop to get your picture taken with this man, whose campaign has been littered with lies like "thousands of people" celebrating 9/11 in New Jersey.

This would be an ideal time for Rob Gleason, the state party leader, and for other Pennsylvania Republicans to make a principled stand, to say that there are certain lines in American politics and discourse that simply cannot be crossed. A cancellation of Trump's appearance would make a powerful statement - that Republicans from the Keystone State believe you can stand up for conservative ideals and reject hate at the same time.

Unfortunately, the state GOP isn't seeing this opportunity. "Over the course of the past year, the Republican Party of Pennsylvania has allowed a number of presidential candidates to speak with voters at our events," the party's communications chair Megan Sweeney emailed me yesterday. "It's up to the voters to decide who they support."

We are living in extraordinary times that require extraordinary measures. Trump's political movement has clearly crossed the line into fascism. His blatant appeals to racism and xenophobia, his increasingly alarming proposals to create a registry of Muslims in America, to close down mosques and now to ban new Muslim arrivals, his appeals to middle-class fears and to "make America great again," and the thuggery that has become a hallmark of his campaign rallies, are all signs of a dangerous, reactionary fascist movement in this country, something that never should have reached this point.

And now the Pennsylvania Republican Party is about to take blood money on the back of this grotesque carnival. And the genial faces of the GOP ballot in 2016 - folks like Sen. Pat Toomey and U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan, among others - are accomplices to this travesty if they accept one dollar of the funds that are raised on Friday.

They have roughly 48 hours left to get this right.