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The GOP is Making a Historic Mistake
Let me start with a personal statement so as to not turn this into a horse-race thread. I don’t like Donald Trump. I don’t think he will make a good president, and in any other world he would have been put out to pasture long ago. In any other election cycle, any of the other candidates would make a better candidate in the general election and a better president. But we don’t live in another time, and we don’t have another electorate. We have this one. And we are in real long-term trouble. I’m looking past Trump and looking at his supporters to see what can be done to remedy this.
I have concluded that the only path forward right now is through Trump because:
- Trump supporters are wrong on the economic solutions they are proposing. These solutions won’t help them turn around their lives;
- Trump supporters are required to build the Republican coalition;
- Every other path will result in Trump supporters retaining their incorrect assumptions about why they’re in this position;
- Trump supporters are correct that the discourse must be blown up in a way that shatters the presumption that their culture is backward;
- Until that discourse is shattered, every Republican will suffer from a media onslaught that cannot be withstood;
- The electoral coalitions of the past thirty years, on both sides, are not sufficient to implement and sustain any change;
- Absent change, Trump supporters will grow in numbers until they take over.
We are conservatives. We are the ones who acknowledge reality and its limitations. The fact is, there is no way forward right now except with Donald Trump. Every other path is worse. I don’t mean delegate math. It’s a horrible admission, and makes me angry. But that doesn’t make it less true. Let’s look at the alternatives.
Cruz or Rubio Wins a Majority of the Delegates and Loses the General: The Trump supporters split. Some stay home, some show up. Some vote for the Democrat. The Republican Party does not add to its ranks the additional voters Trump is bringing in, save for a few around the edges. Cruz or Rubio loses to Hillary. Hillary cannot both govern as a Democrat, their coalition being what it is, and placate the anger of the Trump voter at the same time: It is the Democrat’s culture and policies that have made them so angry in the first place. It’s just like another Obama term. What do you think happens in 2020 after that series of events? We may be wishing for Trump to save us then. The Republican Party would conclude that the Trump supporters were right: Conservatism won’t work, electorally. In addition, you will see widespread rejection of authority from these voters during the Clinton administration. This is a really bad scenario for the country. There is no way the Republican Party emerges from this with a path forward in 2020 that doesn’t suffer from the same problems it has today, only on steroids. In the end, there is no Democratic or Republican coalition to solve the problems facing the country.
Cruz Wins a Majority of the Delegates and Wins the General: Note that I don’t think this can happen post-Trump. But let’s entertain it. Cruz governs as a constitutional conservative. He spends his entire first term fighting Washington on just about everything and the establishment fights right back. He gets a tax cut, which helps the economy, and reduces regulation, which helps as well. But fundamentally, the economic problems faced by the Trump supporters won’t get any better because they are structural. On the cultural front, having Cruz in office allows the Dems to turn up the volume on their hatred of flyover country. The media follows suit, and the next thing you know, the cultural issues driving Trump supporters are magnified. But the real problem is that Cruz can’t solve the problems faced by the working class, because those problems have nothing to do with religious freedom, rule of law, or other such issues; in fact, their problems will be made worse by a balanced budget. He winds up fighting over judges and abortion and putting trade and immigration on the back burner because Cruz cannot work with anyone on the Hill. He cuts the budget while at the same time the life of the average Trump supporter remains just as bad. And now they have someone else to blame. Every time Cruz mentions that he wants to stick to constitutional principles, Trump supporters roll their eyes and ask “What the heck does that mean for me?” After a Cruz administration, the Trump supporters will be every bit as angry, but they will be as divorced from the Republican Party as they are now from the Democratic Party. This is a recipe for the dissolution of the Republican Party. So there will be no Democratic or Republican coalition to solve any problems facing the country.
Rubio Wins a Majority of the Delegates and Wins the General: Note that I don’t think this can happen post-Trump, but it’s marginally more likely than a Cruz win in the general. In a Rubio administration, we’ll see the problem-solving strategies we’ve used for the past 30 years to address the same problems, albeit with some cosmetic changes that Rubio will attempt to sell as real change. This is a status quo ante government with the same results. Again, we get a rewrite of the tax system and better judges. But what will Rubio do to placate the anger of the Trump supporter? What can he do? Fundamentally, not much. The Dems act with less vitriol than the would during a Cruz administration, but only marginally. We get dragged into some foreign war at some point and the Trump supporters go absolutely nuts over this. Same result as a Cruz administration. In the end, there is no Democratic or Republican coalition to solve any problems facing the country.
The only way to implement conservative policies that can endure and maintain our constituency in the electorate is to turn Trump into a conservative candidate by co-opting him now and building a coalition. In return for the full-fledged support of the Party, Trump agrees to dial down the rhetoric and act presidential. Granted, his policies won’t be as conservative as Cruz’s or Rubio’s, but that’s the heart of the problem, isn’t it? The electorate isn’t there yet on conservative solutions! We need to admit that we cannot win without turning a large part of the Trump supporters into Republican Party supporters. We cannot beat the latino-black-union-banker-millennial-environmentalist-elite-professional coalition of the Democratic Party without these voters.
The only strategy to implement even a part of the conservative agenda and sustain it long term is to build an electoral coalition that supports it, and the only way to do that in the electorate we have today is to co-opt Trump and make him one of ours. The fact is, the electoral coalitions of the past 30 years cannot, on either side of the aisle, sustain any consistent authority from the electorate for change. They have resulted in, and will continue to result in, complete failure to solve problems; therefore, every president will expand his or her authority to the detriment of constitutional government. The Trump movement will grow. This is a recipe for disaster. We need to change the electoral coalitions in order to avoid this result.
The Republican Party cannot see this. They are making a historic mistake.
Put a clothespin on your nose and hold it at arm’s length if you must to keep from passing out.
Published in General
It’s not pretty, but it has substance (as opposed to fluffy dreams). Well done, RFBF.
In effect, after years, as a conservative of being told, “Just wait until next election”, I am now supposed to wait until after Trump clears out of everyone’s systems.
I do not see how putting an egomaniac into office will decrease the speed at which there is executive overreach. I do not believe Trump will honor any deal, be part of anything that limits him on the part of the GOP. Rudy Guliani has said this man sees an invoice as a negotiation point, not something he needs to pay, even if he already agreed to it.
If you are correct, it is all over anyway. Trump = Caesar. The Republic is dead. Welcome to American Empire.
So, if I understand this, Cruz and Rubio, if elected President, stay rigidly within their campaign personas, are unable to enact a conservative agenda, and cannot see the results you predict and end up failures. Trump, on the other hand, changes from the uncouth, egotistical con man he has always been into fine presidential timber. Merely by acting “presidential” within an unspecified agenda, he somehow secures the Trump voters for conservatism, even though whatever it is he does do, it won’t be conservative.
More likely: Trump will stay Trump, and use the Presidency like he has everything else, for his personal aggrandizement at the expense of anything else.
Red/Blue, you make a good case for why Trump is the inevitable candidate. But it does not follow that the Party should fall in line behind him. We are not going to co-opt Trump. Trump is all about smash and burn, and he is not going to disappoint his followers by doing something sensible and sane. He craves their adoration too much.
We have survived Democratic Presidents before. I don’t know if we can survive a fascist or a true socialist. I hope we don’t have to find out. #NeverTrump #PrayWeAvoidSophiesChoice
Fundamentally, the problem is that the Trump supporters need to pick a side, and then that side will have the electoral mandate to solve problems. In their present mood, they aren’t going to pick anyone other than Trump.
We have spent the past thirty years tinkering around the edges of a failing government because the public is divided. That divide needs to break. These are the people who will break it, now or eventually.
You are missing the point by focusing on Trump. Yes he is an egomaniac. Yes, he will be an authoritative rube.
Here is the problem – every single president from now until eternity will be an authoritative president until the electorate is re-balanced. Cruz will, Rubio will, Trump will, Hillary will, Bernie will. And the next one will too. And the next one after that. It’s a structural issue inherent in a divided public.
And it will get worse and worse and worse.
Until the electorate re-balances.
Co-opting Trump is not easy or palatable, and there is no guaranty of success at all. It’s just the only solution that CAN work at all.
We are conservatives for goodness sake. Let’s start admitting the limitations of reality like we are supposed to.
Cruz is an egomaniac. So is Hillary. And they will both expand executive overreach because they will have to. Cruz would break deals – he has done that over and over again in the Senate. So would Hillary. So would Rubio. They all will.
The problem is that this continues perpetually, and eventually leads to fundamental authoritative and permanent change in the American system, unless the pattern is broken.
And it’s broken when one party can build and maintain an electoral advantage beyond a cycle.
We need the Trump supporters.
Trump/Cruz? Trump to shift the paradigm and Cruz to keep it honest? Everyone thought Dick Cheney was the driving force in the Bush 41 administration.
The reality is that of Cruz, Rubio and Trump, Trump is the only one the polls show losing to Hillary. Trump isn’t going to break any divide, he’ll make it worse as there is somewhere near a majority of Americans who will not vote for him for President under any circumstances.
It’s not conservatives who need to get real, but Trump supporters. They are putting Hillary into the White House.
It is about electing the man. Trump is the focus. Cruz and Rubio both believe in the rule of law far more than Trump. Congress could not restrain Obama’s overreach, they will not be able to contain Trump.
I don’t disagree with the problems of the electorate, but I do not agree the solution is Trump. Nor do I think the problems are anything abnormal for a republic. We will not confront the fiscal crisis that is coming until it happens. Republics are like that. We will wait until the 11th hour, and then do something big. It does not matter who gets elected in the meantime.
If we elect Trump, and it is a disaster, none of those voters will say “Whoops, I should have voted for a normal GOP candidate”. They will blame the establishment again.
I think that the American People are to blame. We are soft, irrational, weak minded, and willing to fall for false promises. I know I did, listening to the false promises of the likes of Rubio. The American People want an easy fix.
There is no easy fix for anything. It is all hard and painful. The good news is, the fix will happen, because things will stop.
Like David Duke?
You’ve heard the story about the scorpion and the frog, right? Trump is the scorpion.
I will not join with the mob because they have power.
Reagan was losing to Carter at this point in the cycle and continued polling poorly until June 1980. Polling in a year where the electoral map is shifting is notoriously bad because the assumptions used to extrapolate by pollers are incorrect in a re-balancing year.
Trump is not Reagan. By any means. But who would deny at this point that Trump’s support changes the map? Don’t believe polls on Trump. They are likely wildly off, in either direction.
Yeah, your thoughts are real possibilities. The only one you left out, and it’s probably unlikely, is that Kasich wins but only if the other two get out. I think at this point he’s the only one that can beat Trump. Check out my thoughts on last night’s debate here. Comment #21.
The polls are all we have to go on. Substituting speculation for whatever data we have now isn’t getting closer to reality. Frankly, I think Cruz is far more likely to upset the polls and get things done than Trump is, as he is much more clever, intelligent and knowledgable. But that’s my opinion and I don’t submit it as evidence.
I don’t think Trump changes the map any more than Perot did or any other populist ever does.
Cut it out on the David Duke B.S. You sound like the Nation. This guy has been used by the left for 30 years as a means to destroy republicans simply by requiring a disavowal.
We are allowing ourselves to be taken over by the leftist narrative by even discussing that jerk.
Trump’s non-disavowal made sense in his strategy. Whether or not David Duke endorses you or doesn’t is something only politicos keeping score care about. He is running as someone who doesn’t give a you-know what. I don’t think for a minute that the RE developer from Queens is a KKK-loving racist. But just having the discussion about something so absurd is playing right into the liberal narrative that never helps conservatives.
The right answer to David Duke is not to disavow him. It’s to ask “who cares”? You only need to disavow if there is a reason to. By agreeing to disavow, you are admitting there might be a reason.
If someone asked me to disavow David Duke, I would tell that person to go jump in a lake.
I agree that the “disavow David Duke” meme is a silly, media-created, phony controversy. As much as I dislike Trump, I’ll gladly acknowledge that he doesn’t sound the least bit like a supporter of the KKK. And why make up such a canard, when he does sound a lot like Mussolini?
It seems to me there is some wishful thinking going on here. The case for Trump seems to be that Trump will become someone other than Trump when he becomes President, and that the polls will become something other than what they are before he loses to Hillary.
Of course these things are possible. But similar wishful thinking could be indulged in to support Cruz or Rubio and I don’t think it gets us anywhere. Whatever evidence we have indicates that Trump would be a catastrophic President and won’t get elected in any case.
UPDATE: And on that note, Trump’s insistence that the military will obey illegal orders under him should be disqualifying. Any military officer with any honor will defy him. That’s catastrophic. I can’t believe anyone, especially any veteran, could vote for him after he doubled down on illegal orders. Amazing.
I am assuming that Trump acts as President exactly as he is today. We try to co-opt him. This is about bringing his supporters in and thinking about what happens after Trump.
I admit that I think Trump is much more electorally viable than is generally thought.
As much as most Conservatives dislike Trump and are appalled that Trump may be the Republican nominee, the Left hates Donald Trump with a white hot intensity that could make for truly historic anti-Trump turn out and effectively negate the obvious fact that Hillary Clinton is a corrupt, unethical, imperious, humorless person and is a brutally awful political candidate.
RFBF,
Interesting post. It’s similar to what an (American) acquaintance of mine said to me here when this Trump business began gaining steam. I was dismissing it, of course. He wrote:
And I think you’re right: It’s a real risk. They either get what they want now, or they really will be demanding Hitler, next. The best thing that could happen to this movement is for it to have power and confront the reality of governing and being forced to deliver the goods. Put up or shut up. That’s the outcome I’d prefer.
But. Several big “buts.”
The current GOPe (sorry for want of a better term) strategy seems to be to take the primary to a brokered convention and figure out some what to juggle Trump out of the nomination.
This strategy hands the keys to the White House to the Clinton Crime Family. After due deliberation I’ve concluded that there is no way a Trump presidency could possibly be worse for the country than a Clinton presidency (I know, people disagree, but if you seriously believe that then you should vote for Clinton to head it off instead of banging on about a 3rd party, “staying home on principal,” and #NeverTrump).
I don’t like Trump, my plan is to vote for Cruz on 3/15. I’m thinking about voting for Trump though to:
What evidence is there that Trump would allow himself to be co-opted? I don’t know anything in his history to back that up, and he seems exactly the type of personality (egotistical, narcissistic) that would rather flame out than co-opted.
The fact that in his Super Tuesday speech Trump actually congratulated Cruz on winning TX and OK, saying he knew how hard Ted worked, says to me that Trump wants to unite with our guys once the debate pyrotechnics are over. He even made a slight overture to Marco last night, saying Marco is not a lightweight – which Marco immediately stepped on with his badgering, because his handlers have told him, unwisely, that this gets him points.
I know a lot of small business owners – they would much rather make peace with people, work in coordination with them, than work against them. Trump is making signals in that direction, but political consultants to Cruz & Rubio will be d#mned if they let anyone think our guys could ever get along with Trump. That is such an anti-business way of thinking.
Good point. That’s why I think Trump will pick Kasich for VP.
However, out of all the Republican candidates Trump has been the most cautious of being bellicose. His mistakes will be in not getting into conflicts, rather than getting into them. His challenge will be whether he can exert his “authoritarian” personality without seeming impotent. Given that everything is negotiable to him, he may not do that badly in foreign policy, especially if he has a good team. Bottom line, I do not think he’s going to drop an atomic bomb, if that’s what you’re implying.
My fear with Trump is in economics and causing a backlash to his anti free trade positions. That’s where his heart really is at.
Good analysis as far as it goes, but it ignores the likely consequences of a Clinton 44 presidency. They include:
Well before Trump’s rise began, the GOPe was talking about all of that as being preferable to anybody but Jeb! being elected.
Trump voters seem to think that Cruz, Rubio, Clinton and Sanders are all existential threats to their future. I think they’re right about Rubio, Clinton and Sanders. I can’t say that they’re wrong about Cruz. Or Trump. What I’m afraid of is that Trump is the least bad electable choice.
Ah, another “blow it up and start over” screed. Yep, create a vacuum and then hope that it is filled by the good guys rather than the bad ones.