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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
Several have asked “okay, great… but how?” I might develop that into a second post.
But here would be my strategy: After Nevada, Trump will say something stupid, because that’s what he does. Whatever it is (and they should wait for a real doozie), the RNC should be feign shock at how awful it is and issue an official denunciation. Demand Trump apologize for [fill in the blank], provoking a public fight with him.
We know he’ll double down, so use that as a pretext to block him from the next debate. And when he threatens a third-party run, Reince should say, “you know, that’s a fine idea. We’ll make arrangements.”
When he backtracks, insist that Trump is far too good for the RNC, and that he would be much more successful if he wasn’t saddled with the perfidious GOPe. In other words, call his bluff. And hopefully before Super Tuesday.
This is dumb. Don’t make Trump the legitimate victim. We can’t spend the whole primary spewing vitriol at the “Establishment”, then ask the “Establishment” to behave exactly like we’ve complained about.
Just have every candidate say “while I’m glad Donald Trump has raised many important issues, I don’t agree with him on several of his positions.”
Well said Jon. I’m a life-long Republican from a family of Republicans… volunteers, contributors, the whole thing. We were a perfect example of how Republicans used to grow the party. I come from a lower middle-class, Hispanic, urban family, but the Conservative message made sense to us and it fit with our values. Up until now I’ve supported every presidential candidate, even if he wasn’t my first choice. If Trump is the candidate, I will know that I don’t belong in the Republican party anymore.
Erick Erickson said it better (if a bit more harshly) than I could: “It [the GOP] will not deserve my support and will not get it if it chooses to nominate a pro-abortion liberal masquerading as a conservative, who preys on nationalistic, tribal tendencies and has an army of white supremacists online as his loudest cheerleaders.”
I get it, Trump supporters. You’re angry. Find a better messenger if you want me to take your anger seriously.
At some point I’ll wake up, Jeb! will be the nominee, and I’ll realize drinking that whole bottle of absinthe was a really bad idea.
Doesn’t this require Reince to be a lot more clever than he’s been?
No, I believe what was dumb was spending time spewing vitriol at the “Establishment.” This is how we save our movement and possibly the nation from a demagogue.
Reince needs to do a few Corleone style offers to at least two of the remaining candidates….
I completely understand the anger. Most of my friends say the same.
But I will not vote for Hillary. The Republican Party does not exist anyway if Hillary wins. Eight more years of this and what is the point of this whole American experiment? What was it’s purpose to live like Europe? My ancestors might as well have stayed there!
2012 was the last chance for sanity. Now we deal with the world as we find it. The post Romney world, includes Donald Trump.
If the only vehicle to keep Hillary out of the Whitehouse is Trump, Ill vote for him. My state may make my vote irrelevant, then I doubt I’ll vote at all.
The rules were set, Trump followed the rules. And people are voting for him. No rules or laws are broken. It is dishonorable to reject him when it doesn’t go the way we want.
Honor is honor and backing out would do more damage than sticking it out.
Either we are a democracy or we are not.
Most likely, which is why I phrased my argument to appeal to the RNC’s greedy self-interest. That is their only motivation.
I’m not okay with that either. No more Bushes.
The party was headed for a break-up before Trump entered the race. He’s just exploited the division and disaffection.
If Trump wins the nomination, Trump wins the nomination. Robbing him of it by shenanigans will simply ensure he runs third party while de-legitimizing whoever the Republican “nominee” is. If Trump wins, I think our best bet is to just have everyone else in the party refuse to defend Trump’s idiotic positions. Even without the GOP machine, Trump stands a decent chance of beating HRC, especially since the media will overplay their hand as soon as he wins.
I believe is was ‘dumb’ for the “establishment” to disregard and devalue its own base.
I actually think it very likely Trump will get impeached.
So a better strategy is get a good Vice President Pick and work like crazy to get him elected and wait.
Also people: if Trump wins the nomination over Rubio or Cruz, neither of those guys will beat him in the general. Any “drafted” candidate will be illegitimate from the start, and a long shot. Better to just support Trump when he’s not being idiotic, and impeach him as soon as he breaks the law as President. Which will happen fairly quickly
(sigh)
It shouldn’t be necessary to explain, but since you asked….
The short answer is that conservatives and America are doomed if we don’t eject Trump. The following explains why.
The point of a political party is to effect a particular kind of change. The GOP, as dismal as it is, has been the vehicle for opposing the Left’s Long March through America’s institutions. Not that it has been particularly effective in this endeavor.
I have been saying for months that Trump is the Clinton’s Judas goat. Put another way, his intent is to portray the GOP as a political party that doesn’t deserve to govern. And, to be fair, any political party that nominates Trump doesn’t deserve to govern.
Trump must be ejected because our own political viability is at stake.
This is a bit different than the time William F Buckley drummed the Birchers out of the Right. That was an act of intellectual hygiene. This would be an act of political self-preservation.
You asked,
Yes, ejecting Trump is high risk. But delaying the ejection of Trump will elevate the risk.
But the premise of your question is wrong. This is not an act of suicide because, if Trump wins, the GOP–or whatever might be left of it–will not be worth having. And the GOP is the closest thing America has to an immune system against Leftism.
Put another way, there is no risk to ejecting Trump because, if we don’t, the GOP will be ruined by the autoimmune disease that is Trump.
To which does the RNC owe greater allegiance, Conservatism or Democracy?
It seems to me, as others have noted, it’s too late for the RNC to cut ties with Trump now. He may be a boorish, misogynistic, conspiracy-minded liberal, but he’s won his delegates fair and square. If Rubio or Cruz can’t make an ascendant push in the next wave of primaries, and we as Conservatives want a party that better represents our beliefs, we’re going to have to go out and make one. The GOP is lost.
The Federalist Party was the party of Washington, the party of States’ rights. Maybe it’s time to rededicate ourselves to the legacy of America’s greatest founding father.
Like we did with Obama…?
The process should be allowed to play out to whatever end it comes to. When it’s over, everyone will know where they stand, for better or for worse.
And if there are consequences that come from our choices, well, we believe in that anyway.
Or, we could just skip ahead to the part where we hang him by his feet.
Jon, you sound desperate.
The process is called democracy. Deal with it.
The Dems wouldn’t go along with impeaching Obama. The House GOP’s got enough guys with principles to make impeaching Trump happen.
Disagree. Trump’s a single-man phenomenon based around ability to control media narrative and cult of personality. We won’t be electing entertainers to the Senate and/or House after this, especially after experiencing Trump as a general election candidate and possibly President. The GOP won’t start extolling all his positions; he’s too inconsistent for this to even be feasible.
Not that long ago some Republican ‘leaders’ were saying they’d rather have Trump than Cruz. Does this still hold true?
I am dealing with it by sharing my opinion.
I’m fascinated by the sheer panic on display in this thread. Donald Trump has shaken things up more than I thought possible. I’m depressed about where the country is headed, but I resigned myself long ago to the fact that we are circling the drain. Watching it swirl around and around can be truly mesmerizing at times.
I disagree with this. It makes sense if Trump is in any way a conservative, but he’s not. He’s a con man, and it sucks that so many are stupid enough to fall for it, but the Republican party does not have to accept a man who rejects everything it stands for. And it shouldn’t.
We don’t have enough House GOP guys with principles to impeach Obama?
Fully agree. Trump’s perfidy releases the GOP from any obligation to fight within the rules.
Fire all of the guns.
I know. It’s frightening that somebody wants to actually DO something. Much better to elect another generation of conservatives who can talk the country into oblivion. And elect another Paul Ryan as Speaker.
Just how long do you think there will BE a Republican Party if the southern migration is not stopped? How long do you think there will BE an America if we import the hostile, alien, aggressive culture of Islam untrammeled, to say nothing of wholesale immigration of jihadis.
The middle class is now less than 50% of America. How long do you plan to wait to stop the strip-mining of the economy of high wage jobs?
Youth is being demoralized and disaffected not to mention hopelessly confused by Common Core. You plan to..what, wait another generation to shut it down?
To quote the Rolling Stones, “sad, sad, sad.”
Trump 2016.