“Man, you guys cannot stop talking about him. He is a dangerous presence and, you know, it’s just like candy by the bushel.”
That’s what Hillary Clinton - who possibly didn’t know her mic was live - told MSNBC last Monday night. The former First Lady was of course talking about Donald Trump, and the media’s interest is a byproduct of the public’s fascination.
But if the media and voters “can’t stop talking about him,” America’s entrenched political aristocracy (on both sides of the aisle) wishes everyone would just shut up. While Democrats fear Trump as a kind of threat to the ideals and values that supposedly underpin American democracy, for the GOP this is an existential threat. Trump’s success has sent the establishment back to the drawing board and if he wins the nomination outright, the party will die.
That’s not to say it won’t be resurrected, but it would be an enormous blow in the short-term.
This is complicated by the fact that Republicans are facing a tough choice with Obama’s Supreme Court nomination. Here’s NBC outlining the GOP’s set of “Sophie’s Choices”:
On Trump:
- Acquiesce/surrender to Donald Trump, who is on track (though it's not a slam dunk) to obtain a majority of Republican delegates. The problem here? Almost every poll we've seen shows Trump to be the weakest GOP candidate to face Hillary Clinton.
- Fight Trump to stop him from getting the 1237 delegates he needs. The problem? Trump has talked about "riots" if he's leading in delegates but is denied the nomination, and we don't think he's kidding.
On SCOTUS:
- Oppose the older and more moderate Garland (even hearings and consideration of his nomination), and hope that Republicans don't lose the 2016 election, which would result in, say, a President Hillary Clinton nominating younger and more liberal replacement.
- Relent on Garland, knowing the opposition hurts your vulnerable Senate incumbents up for re-election (Kelly Ayotte, Mark Kirk, Ron Johnson, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey), but welcome the wrath of the GOP base.
Bear in mind, this isn't a criticism of the GOP. Those are the choices they actually face in the months ahead, and there are no right answers.
Not mentioned are other concerns. For instance, if the Republicans "surrender" to Trump, they risk reputational damage. That's not a comment on Trump - clearly he's struck a (loud) chord with large swaths of the electorate - but the simple fact is that most establishment Republicans do not want to be associated with him and it's not out of some petty jealousy. Well maybe it partly is, but part of it is that the GOP doesn't believe that in the long-run, what Trump says should represent the party line. Perhaps the party should look at Trump's spectacular numbers and consider where they went wrong in terms of connecting with voters because as the soon to be "private citizen" Marco Rubio will tell you, "we misjudged some folks."
On top of that, fighting Trump at the convention could be a disaster - and not just because of Trump's "riots." If the GOP stands up and essentially tries to nullify the people's will, the party will make a fool of itself going into the national elections. That is, they would be playing from a position of weakness, especially if they end up nominating someone who didn't even run. That could hand the election to Hillary which, if you're a conservative, is the worst outcome possible.
As it turns out, some Republicans are war-weary when it comes to the frontrunner. Here's Politico with more:
While some Republicans insist on standing firm against the businessman, more and more are contending that it’s time to reach a point of acceptance — and that a drawn-out primary or convention battle could be worse.
“I’m soul-searching right now,” said Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, who last year explored the possibility of launching an anti-Trump campaign. “There’s still a pathway to defeating him, but it’s getting harder to see that.”
“We’re at a turning point,” conceded Randy Kendrick, wife of Arizona Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick and a major contributor to the stop-Trump effort.
“It’s a fork in the road — a political fork.”
At a posh resort in Palm Beach, Fla. — just minutes from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate — many of the Republican Party’s biggest donors discussed whether to continue shelling out millions on an anti-Trump offensive that so far has done little, if anything, to halt his rise. Many of those gathered, including New York hedge-fund manager Paul Singer and members of the Chicago Cubs-owning Ricketts family, have been the primary funders of Our Principles, a super PAC that spent heavily to defeat Trump, plastering Florida and other states with TV ads that portrayed him as a heartless businessman. Several of the donors reiterated their hope that Cruz or Kasich could still somehow win, sources familiar with the gathering told POLITICO. But others indicated they would be open to supporting Trump in the general election.
Another factor: Though Trump remains wildly unpopular with the establishment, many in the party hierarchy now lack a figure to support. While Kasich has a virtually impossible path to the nomination, Cruz, who has devoted his Senate career to poking his finger in the establishment’s eye, is seen as an unpalatable choice.
The confusion in the party’s top ranks has left Republicans divided about whether to keep up the anti-Trump offensive at all, or line up behind him.
Again, there are no "right" answers and every political party faces existential threats at one time or another. But the Trump "problem" is particularly vexing for the GOP.
Perhaps the best move for Republicans would be to embrace the candidate American voters have chosen for the nomination and watch gleefully as a GOP "problem" quickly becomes a "problem" for Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in the national election. Something tells us the polls which show Trump faring worse than any other Republican candidate against the former Secretary of State might be just turn out to be wrong come November.