Posted on 03/23/2016 7:17:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better.
Denial has been Trump's greatest ally. Republicans and commentators didn't believe he would run. They didn't believe he could be an attractive candidate to rational people, no matter how angry with "the establishment" voters said they were. They -- which includes me -- were wrong.
The denial lasted longer for some than others. Long after many observers had come to the realization that Trump was the front-runner, Jeb Bush's super PAC, Right to Rise, believed Bush's real rival was Marco Rubio. It spent $35 million trying to destroy Rubio before it dropped its first $25,000 attacking Trump.
Over the weekend, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus showed the first public signs of acceptance about what's in store for the party. He finally acknowledged that the Republican nominee was probably going to be determined on the convention floor in Cleveland.
Priebus explained, rightly, that the rules are the rules, and that if Trump can't secure the required 1,237 delegates before Cleveland, it's anyone's game. "This is a delegate-driven process," he told CNN's Dana Bash. "The minority of delegates doesn't rule for the majority."
Trump's response to this floor-fight talk was to vomit up the usual word salad.
"All I can say is this, I don't know what's going to happen," Trump told ABC's "This Week." "But I will say this, you're going to have a lot of very unhappy people [if I'm denied the nomination]. And I think, frankly, for the Republicans to disenfranchise all those people because if that happens, they're not voting and the Republicans lose."
Even through the syntactical fog, Trump's point is clear: If he can't reach 1,237, he should get the nomination anyway. Because he is Trump. If that doesn't happen, his supporters will stay home, defect from the party, riot or all three.
And he's right. Not about deserving the nomination even if he doesn't have the delegates. That's typical Trumpian whining. But he's right that if he's denied the nomination, many -- not all, but many -- of his supporters will bolt from the convention and the party.
Left out of Trump's unsubtle threat: Many anti-Trump Republicans will desert the convention and the party if he's not denied the nomination.
There are only three possible ways to avoid a calamitous walkout. Ted Cruz can win the nomination outright before the convention. That's very unlikely given that he'd need to win roughly 80 percent of all the remaining delegates.
Second, Trump could reveal he has a hidden reservoir of magnanimity and patriotism, and rally his faithful to the consensus nominee. Stop laughing.
Third, the delegates could pick someone sufficiently attractive that Trump followers get over their understandable bitterness and support that candidate despite Trump's objections. Who would that be? Certainly not Mitt Romney. Maybe a reanimated Ronald Reagan. Or Batman? I have no idea.
All of these scenarios are so unlikely in part because the split in the GOP isn't merely about a single personality. Trump represents just the most pronounced of a spiderweb of ideological and demographic fault lines that are increasingly difficult to paper over. As Joel Kotkin put it in a column for the Orange County Register, the Republican Party now "consists of interest groups that so broadly dislike each other that they share little common ground."
Put simply, and with the incessant and obtuse comparisons of Trump to Reagan notwithstanding, you cannot have a party that's both Reaganite and Trumpish.
Trump's cheerleaders insist that he's a symptom of long-simmering maladies on the right. I'm persuaded (even though I think Dr. Trump's remedies are nothing but snake oil). Even now, too many GOP leaders think Trump's success is purely a result of his brash personality, and nothing more. But only when we accept that a terrible diagnosis is real is it possible to think intelligently about our options.
To wit: This ends in tears no matter what. Get over it and pick a side.
From what I’ve read, the rules are clear that one needs to get to 1237. Getting to 1236 doesn’t get the prize.
The elctoral vote has a threshold, too. If Ross Perot somehow kept Bill Clinton under 270 EV in the three-way race in 1992, the winner wouldn’t be whoever got closest. The process would follow from there.
Trump is in the driver’s seat to getting to 1237 and with the statements in this thread about his popularity, he should have no problem getting there.
If he collapses down the stretch and can’t make it to the majority of delegates, then that will be his campaign’s failure and not the doing of some cabal.
The endorsements are coming in and going off the number of frequent posts by Trump-supporters here on FR about his popularity, this should be easy for Trump to gain, so why worry?
“vomit up word salad.”
I caught that, too. However, I am glad Jonah DOESN’T try to paint himself as impartial. This pretty accurate analysis comes from someone who is a GOPer, not necessarily a GOP-e person. But he is right, this may not have a good ending.
It appears that fewer and fewer people who support a different candidate than Trump, will happily vote for Trump if he is the nominee. I was pro-Cruz long ago and remain true. I have never been ANTI-Trump. I will support Trump in the general.
Still, I am in the minority, at least according to some polls and from many comments on FreeRepublic. No candidate is perfect, but any number are better than Hillary. At least this time I won’t have to hold my nose to vote, be it for Trump or Cruz.
That’s just my own opinion.
Trump has two positives. One, he understands the adverse impact of unlimited immigration and has clearly stated he is willing to stop it. Two, he will fight against the Democrats (witness his reply to Hillary regarding the war on women) as opposed to cowering in fear and apologizing. If any of the other candidates had been willing to do both, they would have likely had the nomination.
The GOPe candidates are the candidates of the large donors and while they will criticize other Republicans, they are wimps against the Democrats.
Whoops, I crossed threads.
“I get it. You guys think Trump is an answer to a problem. If he wins the nomination he will be a bigger loser than the establishment provides. Your adoration of Trump does not translate into everyone adoring him, he will never consolidate the base but he will unite the dems and independents.”
Your remark illustrates how you are deluding yourself by wrongly assuming the voters are holding Trump in adoration. Nothing could be further from the truth. We had quite a discussion about this very subject at the caucus. The voters favoring Trump made it very clear how they were favoring Trump ONLY because he was ready, willing, and able to serve as their messenger to deliver a message to the GOPe, the DNC, illegal immigrants, and America’s self avowed enemies. Many of these same voters had an assortment of misgivings about Trump as they usually do for most candidates, but the other candidates were not serving their interests, in their opinion. If you don’t listen to those voters, you have only your own self delusion to blame for ignoring the voters’ message and trying to falsely pretend those voters adore Trump.
Wise words that all of us should heed.
Nominating Donald Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. Not nominating Trump will wreck the Republican Party as we know it. The sooner everyone recognizes this fact, the better.
Goldberg is part of the problem. The fact that the Repuke party with be “wrecked” he sees as a Very Terrible Thing.
Many of us see is as an Absolutely Necessary Good Thing and high time.
The GOP “as we know it” has become DemocRAT lite anyway. No loss.
The problem arises when we may be forced to a third party strategy, which will all but guarantee a win for the enemies of freedom. Instead, we must recapture the party.
Right, the GAP(Go Along Party) deserves to be wrecked. Its wounds are self-inflicted.
Actually sounds quite accurate to me. You can say lots of positive things about Donald Trump but being a good orator is not one of them. Trump's twisted syntax matches that of George H. W. Bush.
The Republican Party as we know it is not in the least bit representative of its voters/supporters/constituents - except the donor class.
At least on the federal level - some state and local parties are, thankfully, actually doing what they are in business to do.
So...SCREW the GOP as we know it. It has LIED to us - REPEATEDLY. Anyone with an employee like that would fire him or her in a heartbeat.
I say that the GOP should nominate Trump. It will show the VERY stark difference between where Republicans stand - on the side of unashamed patriotism, protecting national interests at home and abroad, a strong military, (mostly) traditional values like honesty, hard work, thrift and abiding by the law. Many Americans not presently associated with the GOP will find (and have found, so far) that such positions resonate with them. That’ll broaden the Party’s appeal, perhaps ushering in an era of mostly GOP control of the levers of power - until either we screw it up (again) or until the Dems figure out that pandering to every wilting flower or rioting animal, and adhering to every single philosophy that sounds great in a college classroom but doesn’t actually work in the real world, just isn’t working for them - and they return to the Democratic Party of Truman, Humphrey, Scoop Jackson and Sam Nunn.
We are losing our civilization. The freaks that rioted in the streets 40 years ago are now in charge on the other side, and our side SAYS that we oppose them but, in reality, does nothing to stop them and actually conspires to pull the wool over the public’s eye with the freaks. If we are EVER going to save America, the America that the Founders constructed for us, and which our parents and grandparents struggled to keep, make better and gave to us - NOW is the time. We are on the cusp of not being able to save it - the ship of state is headed, full steam, for a gigantic iceberg that is in plain view, and all that the political class can do is argue over who gets a front row seat and how much it costs.
ENOUGH!!!! Time to ditch P.C., time to CUT - actually cut, not Washington, D.C. cut - spending to the bone and at least come close to balancing our budget, time to re-build our military to WIN wars in our national interest - and ONLY those in our national interest, time to repay our vets with respect and decent medical care that is needed because of what they did for us, time to stop being the world’s refugee center and return immigration to what it once was - a boon for our economy, because we only took in people who wanted to abide by our laws and contribute to our society. Time to stop being the fool of the world and start having a coherent foreign policy that works for US - not the rest of the world, and ESPECIALLY not for one world government of any kind. Time to benefit OUR people, time to use OUR resources (abundantly provided by G-d, which our technology now allows us to profitably use). Time to stop treating the citizens of this country like bothersome subjects, and start treating them as the boss of government. Time, in short, to reverse course on most of what has happened in the last 50-60 years in government.
Trump is, IMHO, the only person who has any realistic chance of getting that process started. 8 years isn’t enough to finish, but it can give us a good start, and the breathing room to make a few mistakes here and there, which is inevitable - right now, we have no margin for error. Time to restore America and, YES, TIME TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. I really don’t care who does it or who gets credit for it - I just want my country back, the can-do, strong and moral country of my youth. Time to put the hippies and the freaks into the zoo, where they belong, and stop having them control our destiny.
Well, probably not. I'll give him that.
But what Goldberg is overlooking is that the issue that gave Trump's candidacy such a push is immigration, and if Trump wins the election and addresses that, a huge fault line disappears. I don't think "Trumpism" is a permanent state.
I think it’s a given that this will not have a good ending...for the GOPee.
I’m willing to let my elected delegates from Texas make a deal on the convention floor. Start over? Forget Trump. Forget Cruz.
Who else we got?
This was a very interesting article, thank you for posting.
Goldberg is an often funny writer, though I can’t always agree with him. This article make the massive point that reunification of the Republican party is at huge risk right now.
The way the Republican party wins national elections (when they do), is by having a unified mix of different ideologies that share enough common ground to unite for a common goal.
There are lots of groups in the GOP and any one segment cannot win nationally. The Trump surge seems to be combining the populist section of the Republican party along with the independent types who liked the Perot / Reform Party from the 1990s. Combine that with Republican voters who are setting aside other priorities but are very concerned about illegal immigration and border protection. That’s enough for 40%-55% of the primary/caucus vote and that’s why Trump is winning.
But if Trump wins the nomination but cannot bring the other R groups into the fold this will be a national blowout. Right now, Trump himself occasionally shows a desire to unify and then other times he (or more often a few of his most enthusiastic supporters) are trying the Obama-style “get in their faces” tactic. I’m not sure that’s going to work.
I know the operating thesis of some Trump supporters is that Trumpism itself creates a new coalition of the aforementioned groups plus populist Democrats: Peel off pieces of the union vote, add inner city voters who are economically hurt by illegal immigration, and turn the rust belt into Trump states. I still don’t see the math working unless a whole lot of traditional R voters who are currently adamantly opposed to Trump return.
I can hardly stomach the idea of an Abuela Hillary! presidency, so I hope the situation changes.
The Republican Party as we knew it failed in the 2008 election. By nominating someone so weak that he would campaign with a limp wrist and lose against Obama, the GOP put itself in Hospice care. By nominating someone even weaker to run against a known failure in 2012, they lost the last vestige of trust that their voters had in the leadership.
Today, by running a series of favorites, all of whom are pro-Amnesty, pro-Obamacare, big government liberals, with no regard to the values of American conservatives, the GOP leadership has completely lost the already skeptical base of the party. Who they choose as the nominee no longer affects whether they will be trusted. I pray that a new party will rise, one that loves America as a free country and ignores the Chamber of Commerce push for cheap illegal labor.
Goldberg. Another establishment wonk trying desperately yo protect his rice bowl.
I don't think that's quite the concern.
If it is a fair fight and Trump loses, that's one thing.
But if the candidates spent hundreds of millions of dollars expecting one set of rules, and then the Party changes those rules later to put their thumb on the scale, that's another thing entirely.
If Trump comes up short, he should be expected to deal with free delegates, or make alignments with other candidates fou their delegates.
But if the Party tries to disqualify the delegates that people voted in good faith for, or if they try to substitute ringers in place of delegates that people voted in good faith for, then there will be trouble.
That is what would incite the doomsday scenarios.
-PJ
Thanks for posting this Jonah “GOPee Safe Space” Goldberg article from Clownhall. :)
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