In July of last year Jay H. Ell blogged that Trump was in this for the long run and that he was facilitating the dissolution of the GOP. (Blog: Trump Comes Up Trumps). In December 2015 he wrote about “Trump’s Hostile Takeover of the GOP” and followed this up by arguing that he still couldn’t win the Presidency - the demographics were against any Republican candidate. Nothing happened in Super Tuesday’s Primary elections to alter these predictions.
But as Trump does an obscene war dance over the body of the deceased Republican Party trashing their pitiful standard bearers and proving that the future is no longer what it used to be, the question is whether he has merely rewritten Republican politics or has he shaken up the whole American political scene and the way the body politic reacts? Trump so far has comprehensively confounded conventional wisdom so can any of the past assumptions on his viability be utilized?
So all bets are off for conventional GOP politics forever. The issue is whether they are all off for the whole American political scene.
TRUMP THE UNCONVENTIONAL ALPHA CANDIDATE
There is so much that Trump has done that would have sunk any conventional candidate by his very offensive, and abusive behavior and his discriminatory, racist comments, to his almost total failure to produce coherent and detailed policy. This bizarre behavior has culminated in his tacit acceptance of support from the Klu Klux Klan. He has played fast and loose with the facts and changes his position, with monotonous regularity, without batting an eyelid. He intersperses his one liners by smears of anyone and everyone who dares to criticize or oppose him, having developed the smear to an art form. Moreover his record of bankruptcies, hypocrisy, fraud and deception is obvious to anyone who scratches the surface.
He is a one man band. But this one man band has connected with a section of society who are totally in tune with some or other part of his off beat beliefs and behavior. His loyal following is more interested in attitude than they are in substance. He appeals to those who are infatuated by authoritarians in addition to bigots.They see the world as Trump sees it but as other bystanders don’t. For example, the general consensus of the outcome of the pre Super Tuesday debate was that Rubio was the winner and Cruz was second. Trump the pundits agreed was thrashed. However Time Magazine ran a contemporaneous poll and Trump was the winner with a sixty percent vote. Now perception is reality and his supporters can hear or see what others cannot.
WHY THE ESTABLISHMENT FIDDLED WHILE THE GOP BURNED
Now it is common cause that the GOP Establishment did nothing to halt Trump. According to the New York Times of nearly two hundred and forty million dollars spent in the Republican Primary thus far, less than three million was directed towards attacking The Donald. Neither, till recently, have the candidates or Republican leaders done anything to stop what now appears a train hurtling to the nomination. The question is why?
According to political scientist Daniel Drezner it was the opinion of everyone that Trump would fizzle out sooner or later if left alone. It was inconceivable that he would march on. In addition in such a crowded field it was in no specific candidate’s interest to go for him. The GOP leadership was following their own written playbook namely that the “party insiders exercised significant control over the nomination process”. (What they seemed to have forgotten is that Trump had taken over the Party!). Their misplaced confidence in their own influence overrode commonsense as Trump dominated poll after poll and spoke to raucous humungous crowds. Maybe it was denial but if it was they were supported by the political scientists. No lesser group than the Five Thirty Eight, who have forecast election results with uncanny accuracy, rated Trump’s chances of winning the nomination less than him playing in the National Basketball Association Finals.
Now Drezner argues that the pundits across the board may not have been flawed in their analysis because their hypotheses were not fully tested since the GOP Establishment did nothing to stop Trump - i.e. did not exercise their supposed power. But as Jay H. Ell has been blogging the GOP were moribund anyway and all the charismatic media savvy super salesmanTrump was doing was filling the void.
Any rate the panic is on and it is all systems go to stop The Donald.
STOP DONALD AT ALL COSTS!
According to the NY Times a meeting of the GOP Establishment met in New York in mid February to discuss how to stop Trump’s inexorable march to the nomination. There was every reason for panic as the conventional wisdom now was that he would be massacred by Hillary Clinton and even Bernie Sanders. He is considered such a liability and embarrassment that Mitch McConnell, in an effort to keep the Senate controlled by the Republicans, discussed the possibility of running negative ads against him. It was also suggested at this meeting that the GOP Governors should write a letter stating their opposition to Trump. The central thrust of the meeting was to try and unite behind a single candidate and the flawed Rubio was the obvious choice. However Kasich was not budging he was hanging on until Ohio. Nearly every GOP strategist worth his or her salt chipped in at this doleful Establishment meeting chaired by none other than Bush’s brain, Karl Rove.
Rubio and Cruz were obviously told that the Establishment would run cover for them if they attacked the frontrunner at the GOP’s pre Super Tuesday’s debate. That strategy added to the unedifying mess the GOP were in as insults and undignified gutter behavior became the mantra in the GOP debate and thereafter. Trump’s obscenities were now countered with allegations of him peeing in his pants. Trump was labelled the “con man”, Rubio “the croker” and Cruz, “the liar and cheat” - you pays your money and you takes your choice. Obviously Cruz had been given a reprieve as in Iowa the Establishment publicly came out against him. But in those days the unshakeable dogma was that Trump would die a natural death.
Soon after the meeting the conservative American Future Fund apparently took a decision to run ads against the billionaire frontrunner focussing on his fraud in the Trump University debacle. Surfacing contemporaneously was his disastrous venture into the mortgage business that not only lost average Americans money it showed very poor business sense.
Mitt Romney the 2012 Republican Presidential standard bearer, who has taken the lead in the stop Trump project ,hit the media querying Trump’s tax returns. He followed this up with a devastating all embracing attack on Trump labelling him a phony and a fraud whose promises were on a par with a worthless degree from Trump University. He summed it all up by adding that the billionaire has not the temperament or judgement to be President and his foreign policies would make America and the world a less safe place to live in.
Speaker Ryan, in the aftermath of Super Tuesday and Trump’s flirtation with KKK’s David Duke, announced that the GOP Congress was against white supremacy and that their nominee cannot pray on bigotry. He continued that the Republican Congressional members would run on well founded principles regardless of any other election races.
According to MSNBC, one day after Super Tuesday, more than thirty key Republican legislators, strategists or commentators had made strongly worded statements against Trump.
PLAN B
Now as the GOP could not unite behind one candidate Plan B has been put into operation. As there is no way they can stop Trump from winning the Primaries the objective would be to stop him getting fifty percent of the delegates and then unite at the Convention to defeat him. They are aiming for a brokered convention. Twenty - five percent of delegates to the GOP Convention are not elected by the “people” giving the Establishment a large say at the end of the day. So if Trump has not attained 1237 delegates of the 1800 or so available to the electorate before convention time there is going to be maneuvering to beat the band. In order to block him A Stop Trump Political Action Committee is actively going to run ads against him educating the Republicans as to what a bad businessman he is, the number of victims that lie in his wake from shady deals and that he is not a true conservative tra la la. Jay H. Ell believes if they are ultimately successful at electing an alternative candidate Trump’s supporters would go ballistic. At the very least they won’t vote. So the end result is the same - the Trump Revolution has succeeded and who knows what will follow.
Incidentally Trump is responding angrily to the establishment’s more and more overt opposition to his possible coronation. He told CBS News that the Republican Party are. “not treating him right”. He maintained that the GOP had not kept up their end of the bargain. He continued, “They have this lightweight Senator Rubio saying terrible things. As far as I am concerned they are defaulting on their pledge. I want to remind them that I represent millions of people that have voted for me”.
So one does not need to speculate what Trump may do if the establishment tries to maneuver him out of the nomination - he will take them on.
ACCEPTANCE?
There are some in the party that are accepting the inevitable and lining up behind Trump. Chris Christie the forceful Governor from New Jersey who dropped out of the Presidential race has broken ranks from the Party and endorsed him. Although Christie is very weakened and sustained a withering attack as a result of his decision he still represents the inner circle and they had to have been hoping that he would line up behind the Establishment choice. Then the Governor of Maine has done a complete about face on Trump and seconded Christie. Jeff Sessons from Alabama is the first Senator to join team Trump. Newt Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House, who lead a Republican come back in the nineties and was a Presidential frontrunner for a short while in 2012, has counseled the GOP that they had better come to terms with a Trump candidature.
IS TRUMP REALLY TOAST IN A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?
Now in case anyone has forgotten the selfsame GOP Establishment, the pundits and political scientists that forecast Trump’s premature demise in the Primary nomination contest are predicting his slaughter in a Presidential race. This certainly isn’t Trump’s viewpoint nor that of his supporters so let us examine the evidence for and against his candidature in a Presidential election. Jay H. Ell thus far has regarded him chanceless as a result of the demographics. (Blog: “Can Trump Win the Presidency?”). According to the GOP’s own working papers the Republicans cannot win the Presidency unless they get a sizable chunk of the Hispanic vote. Bush 43 got forty - seven percent and won. Romney garnered twenty - seven and lost even though he had a majority of white votes. Trump has alienated the Latino demographic beyond repair. He would be lucky to register ten percent. Then he has offended every other demographic from women to LGBT’s. He has declared war on the Muslims. The polls show that the Independents are dead against him. He has half the Republic Party retreating. He has an over fifty percent unfavorability rating....
So where is Trump going to get the votes to win a Presidential election?
TRUMP’S POSSIBLE NEW CONSTITUENCIES AND CHALLENGES HE FACES
Trump argues that all the demographics support him, including the Hispanics, but he has to know that he would be up against it. It is also really impossible to evaluate his claim that the “Reagan Democrats” are returning to him. It appears highly unlikely. He has to lay claim to a new large demographic that will influence the outcome. Bear in mind too that he would have his work cut out to achieve this as his white vote will have to also make up for the minorities.The only possibility is in the Mid West which has a large population of white males in blue collar occupations, many of them who are unionized. The latter may be seduced that The Donald can really force the Apples of this world to bring home the jobs.
Then there is all that garbage, of Trump’s inglorious career, that is the hot hands of the Democratic researchers that will hit the fan. The workers and investors that have been victimized in his wake will make poor old Romney’s exposures look like a Sunday walk in the park with George. Trump has only received a taste of the vituperation that is about to follow. Already operatives are forming new Political Action Committees. This activity is springing up all over the place. The owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, for example, has donated three million dollars for advertisements to run against him in Illinois. The problem for the Establishment is the only candidate who has a ghost of a chance to beat Trump is Ted Cruz who in the words of Senator Graham, a doyen of the GOP, the choice between Trump and Cruz is between being poisoned or being shot.
Now so much can happen between now and November that could alter the scenario. However, it has hard to make a case for Trump not receiving an historic thrashing. As matters stand the establishment GOP have made it quite clear where they stand on his bigotry and incoherent policy making decisions.
WHITHER THE GOP
There is also the distinct possibility if Trump does not receive 1237 delegates by convention time then the 607 “bonus and Party leadership” delegates out of the total 2,472 votes will weigh in at the brokered convention and havoc will ensue as Trump is replaced. In a way Trump’s best bet is to be robbed by the Establishment and spared the humiliation of being a big time loser. The GOP, as Lindsay Graham has now maintained, could even nominate Cruz and go down with a bigot whose reputation is reasonably intact and the Party will suffer less damage.
Jennifer Rubin, the Washington Post’s prolific columnist and supporter of the GOP, believes that everyone should come to terms with the fact that Trump has already reeked havoc, dump him and start rebuilding the Party. This is really the heavies. Even Goldwater had the Party behind him in his historic defeat.
Whichever way you look at it the Republican Party is brain dead and some - one should turn off the machines.
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