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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 suggestion that it’s a good outcome if Trump wins is not, in my opinion, taking into consideration the man’s despicable character, as exemplified by his bullying actions in the past, his unhinged comments on so many subjects, his threats against those who criticize him, his threats to sue his opponents, to bolt the GOP and run 3rd party because he got booed at a debate, his petulance in skipping a debate because Megyn Kelly was going to be there, his defamation of George W. Bush, his willingness to ridicule the handicapped, his promise to torture prisoners, and much, much more.
Hillary and Bernie are disasters of historic proportions, but so is Trump. We have a very narrow window to avoid this three-headed monster and save the country.
LM, I am going to bed. Please let me know how the response to 88 works out.
You are dreaming. Have you seen the man’s negatives? A sizable portion of conservatives will (rightly) refuse to be party to his campaign, not just by staying home on Election Day but by refusing to play any part in a GOTV effort. That is if the Donald has learned what a ground game is by then.
I agree. But that window doesn’t include “Establishment GOP colluding to rob Trump of nomination”. This legitimizes his third-party run, which would 100% happen if the GOP screwed him.
Oh, yes, Hillary absolutely dooms the country. The only difference is that it won’t be pegged to conservatives. If you’re going to elect a liberal buffoon, wouldn’t you rather have the one who at least acknowledges being a liberal? I so much rather allow the other side to tank the country, than to have my own side tank the country. Then we preserve our integrity and can attempt to rebuild.
I do not support Trump, but if anyone destroyed the GOP it was the party itself. They have consistently gone against the what the party was supposed to stand for and was more concerned with what the New York Times would wrote about them then actually do what their base wants them to do. Also their rejection of the tea party has allowed for the rise in Trump. The Tea Party was a movement who’s biggest beef was the national debt, they first emerged after the passage of the stimulus. They were milgned and called racist and other horrible things. But the tea party were a hodge podge of working class democrats, disgruntled republicans and others that seem to make up the Trump coalition. These people helped bring about the republican congressional majority and although the party took their votes they did nothing regarding their concerns. We are experiencing that comeuppance right now with the rise of Trump. I kind of think it is too late for those folks.
Again, I’ve seen all the polls. I’m the one telling people to go look at the polls before voting, for pete’s sake.
Have you seen Hillary’s negatives? Have you seen the low Dem turnout? Have you seen Trump’s resiliency to attacks, and how he labels and dismisses his rivals? Did you foresee Trump doing this well before? If not, why are you predicting the general election so certainly? And how do you convince yourself that robbing Trump of the nomination will end up with President R, while leaving him in will result in Clinton?
Good, at least then the GOP and conservatism may avoid fatal injury due to association with him.
Hillary would probably actually be a better president than Trump. That really says something about how much of a disaster he is. Hillary would be marginally better than Obama, who I’ve classified as the worst president in the history of the US.
Listen, I’ve already got liberal friends who use “Trump” and “conservative” interchangeably. To them, he is simply proof that we are everything liberals (and the media) have been saying about us all along. If we don’t reject that, we will not have a leg to stand on. There is literally nothing he could actually accomplish that would make that a worthwhile tradeoff.
I agree with you, but you can’t “preserve your integrity” when you’re advocating overruling the base and rigging the primary.
Would the Dems vote to impeach Trump? With a buffoon as the party standard bearer…. think of the down party that they could tar with the Trump legacy..
We could solve all of this by lining up behind Cruz. Just wanted to throw that out!
No, this just reveals us as the establishment shills we’ve been convincing ourselves we’re not. We gain nothing if we rob the GOP voters of a voice while handing the election to HRC.
Once he sends the IRS after them they will. Or starts doing more with his “pen and phone” then Obama even knew was possible.
Clinton will have a professional political operation behind her, one that knows how to get voters to polls. Democrats and the left have proven themselves willing and able to vote for personally flawed candidates.
I am by no means certain a conservative will beat Hillary in the general but I am certain we can maintain a conservative House with a conservative at the top of the ticket.
If he gets enough WTM states he can win with a plurality of the votes. Maybe not 35%, but I’d guess his ceiling is closer to 40-45%.
Even if he only gets a plurality of delegates if they don’t give it to him in a brokered convention he will cry “Cheating!” and burn down the GOP. He’s been laying the groundwork for that since the get-go. So I think they give it to him.
Trump’s ability to generate controversy helps in the primary because it gives the media an excuse to give him so much airtime. In the general, they will give him precisely as much airtime, on precisely the subjects, to maximize damage.
You mentioned Bernie elsewhere, but I think the Dems are handling that situation beautifully. They’ve taken a dispirited electorate and found someone to get them fired up. When Hillary wins, Bernie will enthusiastically endorse her, maybe even get a spot in her Cabinet or VP pick. He will morph from her pretend challenger to one of her strongest assets.
Why? Because the Dems will put aside their differences once they are facing the cartoonish embodiment of what they think is evil, greedy, hateful, bigoted capitalism.
Trump’s learning, and as nominee would have a GOP behind him denouncing half his positions but still getting voters to the polls. Also, Clinton’s getting significantly fewer voters to the polls this cycle versus ’08.
I’m not saying nominating Trump is a good idea. I’m saying “riding it out with Trump” if he wins is still less stupid than “robbing Trump of the win, trying to win a 3-person race with a drafted candidate.”
I don’t know. Cruz makes me more angry than Trump actually. I feel angry at Trump, but also removed from him that I’m not particularly embarrassed by him, he isn’t me.
Cruz agrees with my politics, but he is so strident, and even devious and fake about it, I don’t feel he is a good example of who I want to represent my beliefs. And for all the talk of Ted being smart, I see little evidence of smart. Intelligence of course, but not smart. He has no political ability what so ever, politics is about bringing others around to your views and Ted fails at that, and is the stereotype of an inflexible ideologue.
Cruz’s behavior reflects on my ideology, so he actually embarrasses me personally more than Trump.
I don’t think Trump is Conservative by any stretch and so I don’t feel responsible for what he is going to do.
I would actually have a very hard time voting for Bush as well. I think much of the fighting that has gone on is centered around Gore v. Bush and the Iraq war and I want that era to be over. No Clintons, No Bushes… we need a new start.
So Trump is just one of many I have a difficult time supporting.
We maintain the conservative movement by refusing to be associated with a demagogue.
Problem is, the RNC itself has negative credibility. It needs a plan to nudge it into positive territory.
It is an interesting thought. I don’t think he’d be getting screwed. Under that system, anyone could register as a republican and get enough votes… regardless of his beliefs. Sanders could do it. I don’t believe that there are more than a fraction of Trump supporters who could even articulate anything even approaching a definition of conservatism, much less its basic tenets. I also don’t know how many actual democrats or liberals are voting for Trump. There is a very good argument that his candidacy is literally a fraud, but there is absolutely no reason why the Republican party should accept a man who does not agree with any of their stances.
Consider this analogy. A church with a hierarchy… one church body hires a pastor to serve in their church. He goes to the district counsel and spouts off enough stuff to have it approved; he goes higher up for ordination, and it is revealed that he rejects the Church’s basic creeds. He would be rejected, and rightly rejected.
Obviously – Obviously! – the republican party is not a church. Also, churches are not “democracy” (though, neither is the Republican party). I get that. But the analogy remains. That is what a con-man is. He can convince as many people as he convinces… the point of having a party leadership is to avoid this very business where a con-man actually manages to convince enough people he is something that he clearly is not. Trump absolutely should be rejected at the convention, regardless of how many of votes he has. This is simply for the reasons that I’ve articulated above. He’s NOT a conservative, and he’s NOT a Republican. Having the other side win would clearly be better than having someone from the other side win in our name. Fraud is far worse than loss.
Also, please don’t use your liberal or leftist friends as a litmust test. I have a lot of liberal/ leftist friends and they will find fault with any conservative or republican if Rubio was up there they would find some way to turn him into some kind of oppressive, hateful jerk. That is what they do, they don’t attack on substance they attack on character and if you don’t toe the liberal line then you are a horrible person.
Look what the New York Times did to their favorite republican, John McCain after he got the nomination. They will turn on anyone, might as well go with the most conservative who is Cruz (in my opinion) the media will destroy anyone who isn’t on the left, period, no matter how adorable they are.
He would not have the GOP behind him, most would be actively separating themselves from him.
This is nearly inevitable anyway. Convincing his voters to not support his 3rd-party run will be easier if he’s not telling the truth when he says “the GOP Establishment Screwed Me”
Agreed.
There’s a decent chance they’re rigging the process for Clinton. In Iowa and Nevada, they’re not releasing the vote counts. Bernie supporters are PISSED.
This is inevitable with anyone, and when they nominate HRC, our side will be equally as horrified. Many R’s won’t vote, but many D’s won’t either.
A bit like GWB’s strategy of abandoning free market principles in order to save the free market?
Interesting point. If Trump started doing the same things the Clintons or Obama did, Dems would be more than ready to impeach. In that case, maybe the most important GOP nomination will be the one for Vice President.
I hope you’re joking. I would happily vote for Cruz. I really wish that we were having this whole fight over Rubio and Cruz, because I sincerely believe that both are actual conservatives. We could argue electability and trustworthiness, but good grief, that’s what we’re supposed to be fighting about!
The “conservative movement” will be fine regardless of whether or not Trump wins the R nomination, and whether or not he wins the general. We’ll just lose this election.
Trump’s negatives are higher. I don’t see primary turnout as indicating much. They will come out in droves to vote against Trump.
Trump is resilient to attacks during a GOP primary because his supporters are devoted and he has high name recognition. He’s not really weathered any serious attacks from the Democrats or media yet.
Trump’s ascendancy was no surprise to me. Disappointing, yes. And no, I did not predict it, but his entering the race dispirited me because I knew this could happen. I’m an extremely cynical person.
I don’t think any Republican will win the White House. I think Trump has guaranteed that. Whether he gets the nom and melts down or loses the nom and goes third party, all roads lead to President HRC.
Even if I thought Trump could win in November, I would rather lose with honor than “win” that outcome. If he’s the nominee I will vote third party and do what I can to stop Trump.
Well, see my comment above. I think calling Trump out as a fraud and rejecting his candidacy does preserve your integrity. Far more than the scenario Jon predicts, which would entail blatant hypocrisy or a complete 180 in party platform. We would probably lose. I’m acknowledging that. And it would be hard to get one of the other guys to step in for the general.