The Stain of Donald Trump
As Election 2016 careens out of the nomination season (full disclosure – the Libertarian nominees have earned my support), the Trump transformation of the Republican Party continues (Bloomberg).
An embattled Donald Trump urgently rallied his most visible supporters to defend his attacks on a federal judge’s Mexican ancestry during a conference call on Monday in which he ordered them to question the judge’s credibility and impugn reporters as racists.
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When former Arizona Governor Jan Brewer interrupted the discussion to inform Trump that his own campaign had asked surrogates to stop talking about the lawsuit in an e-mail on Sunday, Trump repeatedly demanded to know who sent the memo, and immediately overruled his staff.
“Take that order and throw it the hell out,” Trump said.
Told the memo was sent by Erica Freeman, a staffer who circulates information to surrogates, Trump said he didn’t know her. He openly questioned how the campaign could defend itself if supporters weren’t allowed to talk.
“Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks?” Trump said. “That’s one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren’t so smart.”
So Judge Gonzalo Curiel is now a greater threat to the Republic than Hillary Clinton (as Byron York noted, His Honor got more time during Trump’s San Diego speech than Clinton did). Because he’s Mexican-American. Or something.
Most Republicans are trying to thread the needle and criticize Trump’s comments while still insisting they’ll vote for him. I find it hard to believe they think anyone will buy this sort of nonsense. Paul Ryan’s self-pretzelization is particularly painful to watch (Washington Examiner). More likely, they are merely hoping Trump will lose and go away.
They won’t be so lucky.
For starters, Trump is the symptom, not the cause. As I’ve discussed before, Trump has struck a chord with his Big-Government-For-White-People agenda, and his voters in the Republican Party aren’t going away. Even if he loses (and I’m still certain he will lose), those voters will still demand fealty to his toxic agenda. They will not forget.
More importantly, voters outside the GOP won’t forget either. As Jay Nordlinger notes (emphasis added)…
By nominating him, the Republican party has disfigured itself, morally. Democrats won’t like to hear this, but for all those years, I thought the Republican party had the high ground, morally. I feel that this ground has collapsed beneath me. That is one of the painful aspects of this moment. If someone now says to me, “Ha, ha, Donald Trump is the presidential nominee of your party!” I say, “No, he isn’t.” He represents the Republicans, who, on the basis of this nomination, are transformed. I respect, admire, and love many Republicans, of course — I was their fellow party member until two seconds ago. But, to say it again, the presidential nominee stamps the party. He is the brand of the party. As I see it, or smell it, an odor now attaches to the GOP, and it will linger long past 2016, no matter what happens on Election Day.
Indeed, such odors last for decades. Some effects of the 1964 election are still with us fifty years later. Before it, the Republican nominee for President camapigned hard for African-American voters and was displeased with winning only 35% of them. After 1964, the next GOP nominee all but abandoned African Americans with a “southern strategy” aimed at the new swing-voters: white Southerners.
What should make this all the more chilling for the GOP are two things: 1) the 1964 nominee had no racist intent, and shifted the electorate largely by accident, and 2) the nominee both after and before 1964 was the same man – Richard Nixon. By contrast, the Trumpenproletariat are doing this on purpose.
As if all lof this isn’t bad enough, David French – the brief and bizarre hope for anti-Trump Republicans – is coming forward with tales on intimidation by the Trumpenproletariat (Washington Examiner).
“It was probably one of the more ham-handed attempts at intimidation, which, out of the Trump operation, you can expect things to be done the most incompetent way possible,” French said on MSNBC Tuesday.
“An individual calls and he said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve been asked by the Trump campaign to make sure that, you know, David knows that this will be really, really bad for him,'” French said.
“I considered it a ham-handed effort to intimidate,” he added.
This is the state to which the Republican Party has devolved, and it won’t recover after a Trump loss. Already, the three Republican candidates for Governor of Virginia have promised to back Trump. One of them is his campaign manager here. Another – avowed front-runner Ed Gillespie – “is for Trump and says it all the time,” according to the social media page for his backers.
Virginia voters will remember – and not in a kind way. The Commonwealth will be one of the first places to test the notion that the GOP can clean itself of the stain of Donald Trump.
It can’t. This odor will stick to the party forever.
