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Time for the RNC to Cut Trump Loose
There was a time when the Republican National Committee was terrified that Donald Trump would launch a third-party run. Now their biggest fear should be Trump as the face of the Republican party.
Once a candidate is the presidential nominee, it is the party’s job to defend every statement he makes. When Romney criticized the 47 percent, or McCain suspended his campaign after the economic crisis, or George W. Bush was blindsided by reports of a 1976 drunk driving arrest, the RNC had to support their candidates and aggressively attempt to spin the bad news in their favor.
Every candidate makes missteps here and there, but Trump has based his campaign on indefensible statements. Criticizing POWs because “I like people who weren’t captured.” Claiming a debate moderator had “blood coming out of her wherever.” Saying that in New Jersey, “thousands of people were cheering” the fall of the World Trade Center. Bragging that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot people and I wouldn’t lose voters.”
And when The Donald talks policy, it gets even worse. Trump promised “I would bring back waterboarding and I’d bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” Reince Priebus, et al., will have to passionately back a pro-torture position in a general election.
If Trump repeats that his extremist pro-choice sister would make a great Supreme Court nominee, the party will have to applaud his vision, along with her defense of partial birth abortion.
“I will tell you. They lied,” Trump said about the Bush Administration. “And they said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none.” The RNC press shop will have to agree that Dubya lied his way into the Iraq War and denounce the party’s complicity in promoting this lie. And then the RNC will need to reverse their position when Trump does the following day.
Trump has denounced free trade and threatened tariffs as high as 35 percent. There goes a prominent plank of the Republican platform, newly aligning the party with a rump of far-left economists and Big Labor.
The natural end result of Trumpism is the destruction of Reagan’s three-legged stool, not by sawing down one leg or another, but simultaneously tossing social conservatives, economic conservatives, and defense conservatives into the wood chipper. By necessity, the party will need to be utterly destroyed and remade in The Donald’s image.
Meanwhile, the RNC is charged with backing the election of numerous congressmen, senators, and other down-ballot Republicans whose positions are diametrically opposed to their party’s nominee. Can the party support a candidate who promises to repeal Obamacare when Trump says that he loves the mandate? Will congressional candidates agree that we should “bomb the oil” and then, somehow, take it for ourselves? Do would-be senators in swing states agree that Muslims be banned and deride Hispanic illegal immigrants as marauding rapists?
A party divided against itself will not stand. Nor should it. It would have lost its reason to exist.
Of course the loathed GOP establishment brought this nightmare upon itself after double-dealing conservative voters for decades and mocking the Jeremiahs warning of a coming judgment. The entertainment wing gleefully promoted the reality star as he lashed out at feckless beltway culture. But that is all history. Today, everyone on the right needs to figure out the least bad way forward.
According to most polls, Trump will lose to a Democratic nominee. More and more party faithful are announcing that they cannot in good conscience pull the lever for an anti-conservative like The Donald. After dithering for months, waiting in vain for Trump to fail on his own, the RNC has a decision to make.
The only way the party has a future is for them to cut Trump loose so he can fall on his own. Otherwise, the entire organization will go down with him.
Published in General
The concerns of other Rico members are legitimate. If the conversation ended there with everyone’s cards and preferences on the table then fine. But that isn’t what happened (for different reasons for different people). Lawless fascist is what we get now. Does he act like one? Well you tell me: what does it mean to act like a fascist when one is neither extolling fascism nor actually in power implementing it? Seems to me this is unhelpful shorthand for not liking his persona, not liking his character, not liking his stated positions, believing more his earlier stated positions, not trusting or knowing what he really thinks, or not trusting him to follow the law (for some reason not known to me – hasn’t he been a law abiding citizen?).
He’s addressing the meta issues: current leadership has been timid, incompetent, beholden, dismissive of some segments of the coalition. He’s playing for all of that. He’s using the vehicle of positions that weren’t utterly defeated within the coalition yet have been marginalized (anti immigration, anti illegal immigration, anti-globalism). He’s seeking to attract those people in addition to others more generally disaffected with leadership and results over the last 15 years (at least). He’s destroying the Republicans-lose-to-the-media script.
I’m a socon so I worry about Trump and what he might do. However, with people already paying lip service to social conservatism the result has been abortion and gay marriage as constitutional rights; expansion of legal gambling and drugs; transformation of communities and destruction of institutions due to too-fast immigration flow. Unless he outlaws religion or finds some way to force religious to provide abortions or perform gay marriages (which I don’t see any reason to expect) then I really can’t see how it matters so much or what he might do.
Otherwise, why should Trump cause conversation to cease? Seems to me he has a unique ability to foster conversation on otherwise unspeakable topics and to represent legitimate positions that have been marginalized.
Is the following:
the standard you would find acceptable in a Democrat?
I’m not sure Trump “fosters” conversation. He does seem to provoke it, but the ability to provoke is one thing in a candidate —the job of the candidate, willy-nilly, resembles the job of an entertainer far more than it resembles the job of an actual statesmen—and something else altogether in a president.The persona a candidate presents during a campaign may be slightly phony, but because it has to be maintained over time, it ends up being (mostly) an over-caffienated version of who the candidate actually is, and of the president he would be.
So I have to assume that the Trump we’re seeing is the one and only Trump there is. Smart advisors, the best people, whatever; Trump will be Trump, and we’ll have a Trump presidency, broads, bombast, boundary-issues and all.
Why isn’t this scary?
Anyone who has never been president (that is, everyone other than the 44) is an amateur, but there are degrees of amateurishness…and then there is the hazard presented by the guy who doesn’t know that he’s an amateur. Rummie’s unknown unknowns…and Trump is that guy, the one who doesn’t know and doesn’t know he doesn’t know. Utterly devoid of humility or humor, he appears to believe that he really is a successful businessman, really should be congratulated for having bedded “top women,” and that his sex life in the 198o’s really was the equivalent of military service in Vietnam.
I don’t get it. I don’t get it. I don’t get it.
I am relieved to find myself in such company.
Because to me it’s inchoate fear. What’s to fear? Bombast? Why? Broads? I’m not sure what you mean by this; do you think he’ll get a divorce while in office? Otherwise, yes, I think “smart advisors” is not only honest but exactly mirrors what I think happens anyway – he’s not claiming to know all and that’s refreshingly honest. Boundary issues? I’m not sure what you mean by this either.
The way this reads to me is that you just don’t like him. I have no idea if he’s devoid of humility, and he seems like he does have a sense of humor. The bragging about “top women” isn’t my cup of tea but it doesn’t bother me either. I can’t dismiss everyone I disapprove of because few would survive the cut – including me.
Today Trump said that Romney’s tax returns made him (Romney) look like a fool.
Yesterday he threatened to come after someone he heard had contributed to an anti-Trump PAC.
And this is a man in the process of trying to convince us that he deserves to be president. Imagine when he is president.
You’re overlooking the fact that he say’s he’s going to start being presidential pretty soon.