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How Do You Solve a Problem Like The Donald?
If you’re in the market for a Republican presidential candidate who wants to start a trade war with China, thinks there’s a causal link between vaccines and autism, believes there’s no need for entitlement reform, and led the charge on the birther movement, today’s your lucky day: As Johnny Dubya notes below, Donald Trump — probably the only candidate in this field who spent his announcement speech noodling on the state of America’s ‘brand’ — is now officially in the race.
Now, it’s easy enough to dismiss Trump as a sideshow. As Reid Epstein and Heather Haddon note in their report on the announcement in the Wall Street Journal, NBC is still going forward on the assumption that Trump will tape the new season of Celebrity Apprentice in the fall — something he can’t do if he’s an active candidate — which may mean that he’s just taking his quadrennial exercise in publicity-seeking to new lengths. Either way, Republicans are still going to have to deal with the fact that every asinine utterance that comes out of the bloated gourd atop his shoulders will be gleefully seized upon by the Left and the media as evidence of the fundamental unseriousness of the GOP. They’ll also have to reckon with this:
Mr. Trump is likely to qualify for the Republican National Committee-sanctioned presidential debates, which Fox News and CNN have limited to candidates who place in the top 10 in national polling.
With his broad name recognition, he has received between 3% and 5% support in recent national polls, enough to qualify for the Aug. 6 Fox News debate. Candidates such as former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) may not make the cut. Also in jeopardy of exclusion is Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive and the only prominent woman in the GOP contest.
Could there be a more depressing thought for the GOP than Carly Fiorina — a woman who’s recently become the pacesetter for how Republicans should handle themselves with the media — sitting at home while Trump uses a presidential forum to pimp a 30-year-old book?
Here’s the question: what, if anything, does the GOP do? Leave it alone and count on Trump to expose himself as a buffoon in the debates? Try to find a way to keep him out? Does an enterprising candidate try to put points on the board by sticking it to The Donald onstage (paging Chris Christie)?
What would you do?
Published in General
There is probably a danger of overstating how much it will hurt. There are a fair amount of voters out there, however, who aren’t terribly fond of Democrats but regard Republicans as unserious. Trump does us no favors with that cohort. The damage may be marginal, but there’s no offsetting benefit so it’s still a net negative for us to have him in this field.
We are in complete agreement on this one.
Any such additional mechanism would be unnecessary. The process screens out wackos without additional mechanics.
What you describe would be far more likely to be used by one faction within the GOP as a weapon against another.
Not impossible. A race where Rand Paul wins Iowa, Jeb finishes second even with low numbers because there is a enough of a split between Cruz/Rubio/Walker etc in a large and fragmented field. Panic ensues. I’m not sure how likely, but it is the scenario I worry about at night.
Sound advice all around.
For some reason, I don’t worry about this scenario (mainly because Rand Paul won’t get that many delegates from IA to stay in that long). In fact, one of the best things that could happen to the GOP in many decades would be for, say, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush to need the delegates of, say, South Dakota (primary June 7, 2016) in order to get the nomination. Or to simply hash it out in Cleveland.
I have my doubts about the latter half of that equation. What’s the liberal argument going to be? That Republicans aren’t sufficiently inclusive because they’re not including a candidate in the debates that most everyone on the Left thinks should be read out of polite society? Even for a liberal press known for its intellectual, ahem, flexibility, that’s probably too much of a trick shot to pull off.
I don’t really want him as the nominee, but if he does get it the show where everyone competes to be his VP could be a lot of fun
I think it gives a chance for a win against all the serious candidates. Gain up on Trump and let him be shown to be a fool and blowhard that he is. All the other candidates gain stature by and have some defense against the charges of being wingnuts themselves but being able to show they helped show Trump the door when it mattered. Don’t give Trump any more respect than he deserves and then show him up.
There’s a pretty sizable difference between a candidate who draws fire from the Left because he embodies the conservative belief system and one who draws flak because he’s recognized, even by a huge percentage of the party he ostensibly identifies with, as fundamentally unserious.
I’m especially annoyed at the prospect of pushing Fiorina out, since she is the only one who can effectively and safely attack another female candidate; she can actually say, “I don’t understand how any woman of substance would do the things you’ve done, Hillary.”
Agreed. Going further, I argue Trump will make the rest of the field look good (presidential, adult) by comparison. And he might get some folks to tune in who otherwise wouldn’t.
I still say Fiorina should run for the Democrat nomination. The world desperately needs to see her debating Hillary directly on a regular basis.
I’m not sure I agree with Ben’s prescription, as I think the costs may be much higher than the benefits. That said, there’s a crucial distinction to be made here: the process “screens out wackos” insofar as it keeps them from getting the nomination.
In Trump’s case, you have the relatively rare prospect of someone whose very presence on the debate stage threatens to turn the whole thing into a circus (does anyone think he’ll sit there and quietly wait his turn during debates?). It’s not that we haven’t had crazies like that before, but I’m hard-pressed to think of a case where they came into the ring with this much visibility and celebrity.
Now, maybe that’s just the cost of doing business and there’s nothing to be done about it. But I’m not quite as sanguine as Fred that the whole thing sorts itself out.
2011 Economist article about Trump running then:
http://www.economist.com/node/18586584
OK, clearly Trump’s not Reagan, but I think the “fundamentally unserious” part is mostly a matter of taste. But I have a big problem with letting the Democrats vet Republican candidates. Even if they’re right.
Trump personifies the flashy, bombastic nouveau riche ethos that turns most Americans off. Except for that percent of Americans that made him a billionaire…
But to answer your question, I’d have to go with:
“Leave it alone and count on Trump to expose himself as a buffoon in the debates”
As I don’t think we have much to worry about. See the chart at the link:
“Donald Trump Is The Most Hated Candidate.”
I think Romney became a better debater after sparring with Newt.
Didn’t help in the end, but still, he did improve.
So, only professional politicians need apply? I am not endorsing Trump, and I wish he would run as a Democrat, but the professional politician will be the death of this country.
That was my thought too. If the RNC can come up with some plausible way to keep him out, I’m in favor of it. I’m not too worried about his protests doing great harm to the GOP “brand” if he’s complaining from the outside.
After losing to one of the others, he’ll run as an independent and elect Hillary? but what’s his angle? Threaten to run as an independent? Did he do that well under Obama? Perhaps.
The problem is not that Trump is going to be a buffoon, the problem is that he is going to suck up all the oxygen that people like Kasich are going to need.
I don’t know that they breathe the same air…
Are there really folks who are undecided between Kasich and Trump?
Except Romney overcame Newt by carpet bombing the airwaves with negative ads. Even so, his performance in the first debate was rather Newt-ian.
I am just speculating that other candidates will see Trump’s ” I am the only candidate who will tell it like is and I won’t back down from nothing” approach and make it his own.
Only with less buffoonery. (hopefully)
Of course not. Kasich doesn’t have near the support that Trump has.
Oxygen was a metaphor for air time.
Actively excluding Trump from the primary process would be counterproductive in several ways.
Frantically jury-rigging an ad hoc system to exclude a potentially influential candidate would make the GOP look weak, scared, and unprepared.
And for better or worse, Trump does have supporters among the Republican electorate, supporters who tend to view the rest of the party with disdain but whose votes are important. Pushing out Trump would mean disillusioning these voters even more.
Just let him play and wait for him to self-deport out of the primaries.
Not at all. But if you’re not a careerist, you better know your stuff. That’s not true of Trump or Carson. Fiorina (who, granted, did run for office before) is a different story.
I tend to think we use the experience variable as a rather imperfect proxy for a certain mindset. Yes, many (most?) people who spend their career in the political system start to develop certain callouses. But there are exceptions.
Tom Coburn spent 16 years in Congress, but I doubt many of us would fault him for being a careerist, because he always maintained that outsider’s perspective.
Let’s face it: Scott Walker is a career politician. He was 22 the first time he ran for office and 25 the first time he was elected. Yet, as the collective bargaining fight demonstrated, he never developed the timidity that tends to come with being a political veteran.
Point being: there are outsiders who are in over their head and longtime politicos who don’t fall into the native pathologies of being a professional politician. We’re always better off trying to judge these people as individuals rather than using their backgrounds as heuristic shortcuts.
The reason we tolerated vanity candidates like Herman Cain or Santorum last time is because a lot of us were praying for Mitch Daniels to save us from an obvious loss with Romney. This time we have an abundance of good candidates and don’t need to pander to clowns like Trump.
This only matters if Kasich (et al) has a chance to begin with. I do think we have our natural front-runners in Bush, Walker, and Rubio, and that unless one or two of those three plummet badly it will take more than a little extra airtime for someone like Kasich or Jindal to break through.
Debating Trump might have been good practice for debating Biden.
I’m not sure that only professional politicians need apply, but I think there are some skills I would like to see a preview of before the election. I’d like to see how a president handles an elected legislature, for example. I’d like to see how a president handles difficult times.
Excellent post, Troy-
Start at 2 minutes. There is at least one room in which Mr. Trump is not the weird guy.