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It Isn’t Just the Presidency at Stake
I’ve seen it posted in various places that establishment GOP types are more afraid of Cruz than Trump. Having spent the last several days at meetings that were nothing but establishment GOP, I can report that is absolutely backwards. They don’t fear Trump because they think he will win; they fear him as the GOP nominee because they don’t see how can possibly avoid losing.
Of the remaining candidates, the establishment likes Rubio best, because they believe he has the greatest chance of winning, as he is personally likeable and has a positive message that could appeal beyond the base. Cruz is not liked by the establishment, but all recognize that he is smart and conservative. They believe they would have a tough time winning the general election were he the nominee – they worry that his appeal is now narrowed to only the most conservative/evangelical voters and so won’t have broad enough support — but they think they could win.
Why the focus on winning? Because whichever party prevails in the presidency will likely control of the Senate and, by extension, the balance on the Supreme Court.
Thus, Trump inspires despair. At a personal level, a lot of people in that world tell me they have done business with him, know him, and don’t like or trust him. Several say they think about writing about their experiences, but expect that if they do there will immediately be a harassing letter from his attorneys initiating a lawsuit, and so stay quiet. But they are deeply concerned about what the Democrats’ attack ads will say, and worry that many of Trump’s current enthusiasts will think — too late — “Oh, I didn’t know that. I don’t like that”.
Worse, they don’t believe Trump means what he says, and believe he will say one thing one day, the opposite the next — whatever suits the moment — so they don’t trust that his conservative pronouncements will stick when no longer expedient, and worry that he may start a trade war (think Smoot-Hawley tariffs and the resulting Great Depression).
But their greatest concern is that if Trump is the GOP nominee, they don’t see how he can win; his negatives are higher even than Hillary’s. If the top of the GOP presidential ticket loses, they know that almost certainly means senators running in states the GOP nominee loses will also lose, and the Democrats will take the Senate. And if the Democrats take the Senate (and there are more than enough vulnerable GOP senators to do so), that means Obama’s disastrous and debilitating policies like Obamacare and Dodd-Frank become permanent, a culture of dependency grows, the debt continues to spiral, and we’re looking at a court that for a generation won’t follow the constitution or the law but what it “reasonably knows” ought to be the law.
So here is their calculus: If you are eager enough to kick the SOB’s out of DC that you’ll vote for Trump, then you ought to be prepared come January to live with a Democrat in the White House, Sen. Chuck Schumer as majority leader, and Scalia’s conservative seat filled with someone far to the left, tipping the Court’s balance for a generation.
Published in Politics
The problem is there no one GOP base. And I didn’t say well. But no one is ignoring the Tea Party or the “base”. Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan are the “moderates” of the party now. The Tea Party won. They should be thrilled. The Chafees and Jeffords and various squishes have been chased out but the Rs were still winning elections huge. Biggest House since Hoover or whatever and most conservative almost certainly. Tea Party-types/ Trump supporters whoever should be happy but they’re still pissed because we didn’t shut the government down for the last four years.
Somehow that Rob Long guy though is still hanging around.
Strongly disagree. The Senate under McConnell stopped most of Obama’s agenda and Roberts is significantly more conservative than Kennedy, let alone the lockstep liberals. Part of the reason reason Obama resorted to executive actions is because Congress would not compromise.
I am frustrated by the losses: the Iran non-treaty, treaty, the individual mandate ruling, ImEx, etc. But I do not understate the degree of separation between progressives and the republican party because of my frustration with the latter. The gap between the conservative ideal and current GOP is significant (because we live in a non-utopian world), but so is the gap between the GOP and Democratic Party.
A broken washing machine and a burst levy both flood your basement, but I’m not about to C4 the dam because I hate Maytag.
I agree. Unfortunately, I don’t see this election as a foreign policy election. This isn’t 1980 or 2004.
Well, if the Donald is going to be that big a disaster, I guess “several” can take to their graves the fact that their cowardice helped bring it about.
Which part of the Obama agenda did Congress not fund?
There is no separation between progressives and republicans. Republicans have no issue with the progressive debt funded welfare state. They only wish to be in charge of it.
I disagree. The gap between the GOP and Democrats is miniscule because of the gap between GOP and conservatives, however defined.
In that case you may buy Maytag again. I will shop elsewhere.
“This GOPe talk is straight out of Rush.”
Au contraire! That is intellectually lazy and only sounds good as an explanation if one does not wish to defend an utterly failed and unprincipled GOP leadership that has literally “rolled over” to accept not only unConstitutional unilateral Executive Action, but even the astronomical budget deficits offered by the same Executive without the merest of whimpers to challenge it.
And then to highlight only the parts of the Reagan administration that came about due to a Democrat-controlled Congress, and that President Reagan himself greatly lamented in his memoirs, is an extremely weak argument. In my humble opinion.
Pics or it didn’t happen.
…. an utterly failed and unprincipled GOP leadership that has
literallyfiguratively “rolled over” ….I stand corrected. And still ranting (a pic for your enjoyment) ….
I already stated, like Matt, that I think you are overreaching in your rhetoric. I think only cynicism and emotion support your assessment. Nonetheless, I am curious where else you shop? Trump? The Demolition Store? Cruz and Rubio are imperfect vessels, sure. But compared to Romney, McCain and W, they seem like a big step in the right direction. Remember how we always bemoaned the “next guy” habit of the RNC? Well, that has already been blown away. And it wasn’t all Trump doing it.
Call me naive but I think that there was a trend toward reforming our side and using the pendulum swing moment to roll back much of the Obama damage. Now, I think all of that is at risk because of this “burn it down” mood. You are a smart guy, I can tell from your posts. I don’t think you even support Trump. But please don’t lend your weight to this toxic attitude that is affecting our side. There is still very much more to lose.
Trumpeting
GOP primary elections turnout +24% Democrat turnout -21%
GOP debates audience + 45 million . Democrat debate audience flat
Nevada GOP Hispanic vote for Trump 46 %
Ricochet anti Trump comments 90 % of total comments
If Trump wins the nomination, I’ll be fiddling well the country burns to the ground. Whether it will be more in the spirit of Nero or the band on the ship of the Titanic yet I do not know. I got my fiddle rosined up though either way.
One think I do know though, is that I will never stop fighting against Trump, and Trump’s supporters.
I think you’re preaching to the choir on Trump and his likely policies if elected.
From what I gather 90% of the people here on Ricochet are against Trump, as are most Conservative Op-Ed commentators, National Review, American Spectator, and Weekly Standard. I haven’t seen Heritage and Cato endorsing him, but I haven’t seen them supporting him either. The only conservative support seems to come from Breitbart, which frankly is a little kooky if not outright off the wall.
So I ask, as I’ve done a couple of times now, why is a man with questionable character flaws (vulgar and petty), with no conservative history – actually he’s got a Liberal history – and with a penchant for believing conspiracy theories cornering the GOP presidential nomination? Who in Republican circles is actually supporting this guy? I’m baffled.
I guess the moral of the story is demagogues win.
Yes, and I ignored it, but since you insist.
You are wrong.
POF, StandOne, and Springfield Armory.
Cruz some times. Rubio is the logical extension of the previous three.
This is horribly naïve.
Traditional Republicans for the most part are not supporting him, your analysis is correct.
His support comes from other corners of folks primarily motivated by a combination of retribution and wanting a turn at pulling the levers of extra Constitutional government Republicans helped build and fund.
Well, if Ricochet can’t get to 10,000 subscribers yet in all these years and 90% of those commenting here don’t support him but he’s filled stadiums with numbers in excess of 10K a couple times – there’s your answer. It’s not on this thread. Compromise with these people! Co-opt a portion of his ‘policies’! You can clutch your pearls & tut, tut all you want but their current numbers are more than enough to tank this whole thing you claim to be so invested in. The inflexibility is almost ‘Cruz-like’.
Who supports him in media? Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingrham, and some local talk radio host around the country. None of these people though, support what we call American Conservatism anymore. Pat was kicked out two decades ago after Buckley wrote “In Search on Antisemitism”, Coulter I believe is an outright bigot who hopes to see the GOP become “the white man’s party” and she does not care if Trump backs socialism to do that, and Ingraham is an economic illiterate who acts like the mercantlist argument didn’t lose in the 18th century.
In other words what “media support” he is getting, largely come from people who can hardly be called conservative in the American sense of the word anymore.
It’s partially all our fault, since we no longer talk about issues in a conservative way anymore. It’s mostly the fault of Trump’s supporters though, who simply want to see a strong man destroy everything. They want their Mussolini, their “Obama”, now they got him.
I’ll fight against Trump till the end though.
There is little of Trump’s polices to co-op. What are we suddenly going to become anti-capitalism, anti-constitutionalism, pro Obama mandate, pro planned parenthood, pro “Bush lied people died” conspiracy, pro abortion supporting judiciary? The only positive people point to is him being strongly “anti illegal”, although I doubt that since his sons keep saying how his father is going to let them back in after they leave. So we can add support for touchback amnesty to the list of things we will not support from Trump.
There comes a point where you need to plant your flag, and refuse to cross a line. After Trump inevitably fails (either by losing, or by winning and implementing his failing policies) it will be our job to tear him down once again. This is not a time to compromise our ideals, it’s time to go after a loud mouth demagogue.
Yes there’s a conservative commentariat and brainy insider crowd increasingly out of sync with Republican primary voters. There are those suited up for CPAC, and there are the rest of us watching the results from Nevada and Trump’s victory speech. He won Hispanics, by the way, 44-29 over Rubio.
The general election is not a foregone conclusion. Soon those who have resisted The Donald may have only two choices left: join the Trump train, or become part of what elects a Democrat. Yogi this: the fork in the road is ahead. Prepare to take it.
The electoral process is no longer driven by DC establishments, left or right, nor by readers and writers. This will be the first year when both candidates organize primarily around earned and newer media. Maybe that’s part of the reason why there is so much resistance. Too many experts are trying to extrapolate messages from a man who is instead appealing to voters’ feelings. To paraphrase the title of Roger Ailes’ book, Trump is the message.
For what it is worth I know of two people who claimed to have face to face dealings with Trump. Neither had anything good to say about him.
I personally have no confidence in anything he says. He has held contradictory positions on almost every major issue. I see him as a huckster, a glorified used car salesman, telling everyone what the want to hear. Just wait until the clunker gets off the lot!
The man is a modern demagogue leading his followers to nothing but disappointment and anger, since they seem to believe his backwards policies will do anything. They won’t of course, so they will get even angrier. Trump is a huckster, and not even a very clever one at that. This election is evidence of the weak state of the American people in the Obama Age.
Eight years ago, most of us laughed, or felt a bit scared, when we saw the reaction Obama got from the leftist. It won’t happen with us we told ourselves. We are individualist, we don’t fall for cults in our political belief system! Eight years later we are waking up to the fact that a large portion of the GOP base is just as irrational, and just as willing to throw principles away for the promises of a strong man.
Dark times are ahead for us ladies and gentleman if Trump does win. Prepare for the conservative redoubt.
Clarkhat, is that you? I’m not opposed to giving anarcho-capitalism a try (No, really. I’ve always found the corporate run dystopian futures kind of compelling). I don’t see how handing Hillary/Trump the keys to kingdom brings that about. They are a couple of crony statists who would be terrible, but not quite terrible enough to foment any sort of revolution. Heck, I live in Texas and know people with pallets of ammo who are convinced Obama is a crypto-muslim intent on destroying Christianity (Rating: 1 Pinocchio), and even they haven’t revolted yet. There was Oregon, but that was a fringe effort with little support from those who sympathized with the underlying cause.
Maybe the GOP explodes, but along what lines? How does a minority party (ala UKIP) enact meaningful budget reform, ensure individual liberties, or do anything besides play the spoiler?
I see no upside to the Burn It Down strategy, especially when the party is in the midst of turning more conservative.
I take nothing away from Trump’s ability to close a deal, even though he does absolutely nothing for me, and I would never buy even the most lightly-used of used cars from the man. Obviously, his methods work for a lot of people.
He’s different from Reagan, though.
As long as you’re buying what he’s selling, butter wouldn’t melt in Trump’s mouth.
Cross him, threaten him (competitively, I mean), defy him, or disagree, and he immediately turns into the nastiest of men, calumniating, slandering, threatening (in real terms, usually financial or in terms of ‘exposure’, but as far as I know, at least, non-violently), scatalogically and vulgarly, and often in the pettiest of ways.
This seems to be startlingly effective for Trump, whose contempt for the free will of his supporters is such that he believes he could do anything, even murder someone, and they would not abandon him.(Yes, that’s a new quote, from last night. Perhaps it’s another of his little jokes).
I don’t recall this particular aspect of Reagan’s personality, if it even existed . . . .
Yes, but how big is that? It can’t be 40% of the Republican electorate. It doesn’t add up.
This post is just so I can like this twice. Feel free to join me.
Mussolini is a good analogy.
You are correct. That is why we are seeing record turnout at primaries and caucuses combined with record viewership of debates.
I don’t think this is going to happen. Nothing seems to stick to this guy.
His run reminds me of Obama’s.
Nothing he says or does now or said or did in the past bothers his followers. I don’t know why, for the life of me.
True. Hardly any of his current supporters are likely to change their minds. Unfortunately though, 40% of the Republican primary electorate (even in a year of record-setting primary turnout) is a fraction of the total turnout in a presidential general election.
His negatives are through the roof and going to get worse when the media decides to actually get serious about him as a candidate instead of treating him as the proverbial fun but kind of racist and drunk uncle who also happens to deliver amazing ratings. His supporters will still be with him but winning new people over is going to be pretty tough.
Welcome, Dave L!