“A Wild And Unpredictable Ride”: The Rise Of Donald Trump Is Evidence That Our Political System Isn’t Working
The Republican Party is in total chaos. Democrats aren’t there yet but may be approaching the neighborhood. It’s time to acknowledge that our political system simply isn’t doing its job.
Once again, following Thursday’s debate and its messy aftermath, the GOP establishment confidently predicts that the Donald Trump phenomenon is over, done with, finished, kaput. Why, he picked a fight with popular Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly! He bluffed his way through the debate with rhetoric and showmanship rather than policy positions! His campaign organization is in turmoil! He wouldn’t even pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee!
By any traditional measure, Trump is not a viable candidate. Yet he continues to dominate news coverage of the campaign, and thus far there is no indication that his transgressions have caused the plunge in his poll numbers that party pooh-bahs so eagerly anticipate.
As Buffalo Springfield once sang, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” (Ask your parents, kids.)
By one early measure — an online poll for NBC News conducted by the SurveyMonkey firm — Trump maintained his big lead following the debate, with Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson vaulting into second and third place; businesswoman Carly Fiorina, who dominated the undercard debate, reportedly leapt into the middle of the pack. The numbers in the SurveyMonkey poll are less important than the trend lines: So-called “protest candidates” are capturing voters’ imaginations in a way that establishment candidates are not.
Trump, Fiorina and Carson have never held elective office; the basis of their appeal is that they are not professional politicians. Cruz has spent his time in Washington ostentatiously declining to play politics as usual, recently going so far as to call his own majority leader a liar.
At this point, it is fair to say that a significant portion of the party has lost faith in the GOP establishment. It’s also fair to say that this has little or nothing to do with where candidates stand on the issues.
Trump made his initial mark in this campaign with demagoguery about illegal immigration. But with the exception of Jeb Bush, the other GOP contenders have basically the same position: Seal off the border with Mexico, if necessary by erecting a physical barrier.
Carson has compared the Affordable Care Act to slavery. No other Republican in the race uses such over-the-top language, but they all pledge to repeal Obamacare. Cruz vehemently opposes the Iran nuclear agreement. All the Republican candidates feel the same way. Fiorina wants to shrink bloated government. Everybody else does, too.
The irony is that the Republican field includes several candidates who, in theory, could be formidable in the general election. Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio are both from Florida, a state the GOP basically must win to have any chance in the Electoral College. Ohio Gov. John Kasich or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker theoretically might be able to pry one or more of the Midwestern industrial states out of Democratic hands.
But the process of quelling the Trump-led insurgency is already boxing the whole field into absolutist positions that will be difficult for the eventual nominee to soften. The longer chaos reigns, I believe, the less room the GOP candidate will have to maneuver.
All of this should make Hillary Clinton very happy. But the Democratic Party and its likely nominee have problems of their own.
To be sure, I’d much rather be playing Clinton’s hand than anybody else’s in either party. In the RealClearPolitics polling averages, she leads her closest opponent for the nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, by 35 points — and beats every one of her potential GOP opponents in hypothetical head-to-head matchups.
One problem, however, is that her favorability has been going down, according to polls. Another is that while Sanders has made few discernible inroads with key parts of the Democratic Party coalition — especially African Americans and Latinos — he is within striking distance of Clinton in the first two caucus and primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire.
Sanders is drawing big, passionate crowds, and I believe one reason is that he, too, is kind of an anti-politician — a man who unabashedly labels himself a socialist and refuses to tailor his views to please a given audience.
Significant numbers of voters seem to be demanding authenticity, passion and rough edges from a nominating process designed to produce none of the above. To state the obvious, this could be a wild and unpredictable ride.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 11, 2015
“Not Sounding Like A Professional Politician”: The One Reason Donald Trump Was The Clear Winner Of The First GOP Debate
It was billed as The Donald Trump Show, and the Republican front-runner delivered. He mugged. He pouted. He projected outrage without being troubled by specificity or fact. When he got punched — and the moderators threw haymakers all night — he stuck out his chin and punched back.
Trump made it through the first Republican debate by avoiding the one mistake that could have seriously damaged his insurgent campaign: sounding like a professional politician. For that reason alone, he seemed to me the clear winner.
I watched the debate at the House of Blues in downtown Cleveland with a crowd of true-believer conservatives at a viewing party sponsored by the American Conservative Union. It might not have been a representative sample of Republican primary voters, and I should note that there was an open bar. So my observations should not be confused with actual political science.
That said, it was fascinating that Trump got the loudest cheers, by far, from the beginning of the debate until about three-fourths of the way through, when either exhaustion or the bar began to take a toll and the crowd’s attention seemed to wander.
Anyone who thought the Fox News moderators might go easy on the GOP field, or at least its leader, was mistaken. Yet when Bret Baier maneuvered Trump into acknowledging that he might run in the general election as an independent, there were oohs and aahs — but no catcalls. When Megyn Kelly pressed him on the crude and hurtful things he has said about women, Trump’s shrug — “What I say is what I say” — got a laugh, and his attack on “political correctness” drew applause. When Chris Wallace burrowed in on his four corporate bankruptcies, Trump’s explanation that he was just playing by the rules went over just fine.
One particularly telling moment, I thought, came when Trump was asked about his previous support of Democrats, including likely nominee Hillary Clinton. The gist of Trump’s answer was this: Hey, I gave lots of money to politicians of both parties because that’s what rich and powerful people do, and in exchange they get access and influence. It’s a rotten system but that’s the way it works, and let’s not pretend otherwise.
I think that exchange might help befuddled politicians and pundits understand the Trump insurrection. That is how the system works. For voters who feel powerless and marginalized, I believe it is refreshing and perhaps liberating to hear an insider talk honestly about the role big money plays in politics.
Will Trump’s poll numbers continue to rise? I have no idea. But I think the GOP establishment is whistling past the graveyard if it thinks the Trump bubble has burst.
It was impossible this week to walk anywhere in this lakeside city’s revivifying downtown without bumping into members of the Republican Party’s political elite, and conversations with them suggested a kind of magical thinking: Somehow, they assume, this whole Trump thing will go poof and disappear. Order will be restored to the GOP universe.
That may come to pass. But I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen Thursday night.
Oh yes, there were nine other men on that stage at Quicken Loans Arena. The consensus here seemed to be that Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who just squeaked into the prime-time debate, had a good evening and should continue his rise in the polls. There was also a lot of buzz about Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who some saw as smooth and almost Obama-esque in a hopey-changey kind of way.
Jeb Bush, by my reckoning, had a fair-to-middling night. I felt no passion from the House of Blues crowd for anything he said. If he ends up being the nominee, it will be because the party falls in line, not in love.
The political cognoscenti seem to think that neurosurgeon Ben Carson had a terrible evening. I wouldn’t be surprised if his poll numbers went up. Just a hunch, but he came across as genuine and charming.
As for the “kiddie table” debate held earlier Thursday, the conventional wisdom is right: Businesswoman Carly Fiorina was the star and should at least vault into the top 10. I think she’s wrong about most everything, but she’s sharp as a tack.
The GOP race is full of excitement. There’s one problem: On most issues, from women’s health to national security, the party is far out of step with the general electorate. Keep that in mind as this political version of “Game of Thrones” continues to unfold.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, August 7, 2015
“Tea Party Spawns GOP Nightmare”: How It’s Already Ruining The Party’s ’16 Strategy
If you’re understandably perplexed by the Republican Party’s apparent decision to enter the post-Obama era by nominating either another member of the Bush dynasty, or another version of Mitt Romney, there’s at least one way to think about it that might help explain the seemingly inexplicable. Put simply, the leaders of the GOP, the people who tend to be referred to as “the establishment,” fervently believe that in order to win in 2016, Republicans will have to convince voters that the party is once again what it was for much of the 20th century: safe, staid and, in a word, boring.
Of course, in a perfect world, Republicans would rather their presidential candidate be seen as a charismatic dynamo similar to Barack Obama in 2008 (or Ronald Reagan in the final weeks before Election Day 1980). But Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the party’s de facto chief strategist, would likely consider a GOP nominee who reminds voters of a suburban accountant nearly as good — especially after eight years of tumult under a Democratic president. Thus the appeal of your Jeb Bushes and Mitt Romneys — and thus the establishment’s aversion to more fire-breathing types like Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.
The plan is obviously cynical, but it’s also pretty savvy. It’s a testament to not only how much attention the party leaders pay to controlling the media narrative, but also how little they pay to, y’know, actual policy. And if all the GOP had to do between now and November ’16 is keep troublemakers like Paul, Cruz and Mike Huckabee at a distance from the party’s nomination, you’d have to consider it in a strong position to win back the White House, on the strength of voter fatigue with the Democrats, if nothing else.
But here’s the problem: There’s this thing called Congress, which is now the full responsibility of the GOP. And while there are plenty of GOPers in Congress who care deeply about which party holds 1600 Pennsylvania, there are also more than a few who think they were elected to change Washington. They answer to conservative activists who will no longer trim their sails so a RINO can enjoy free flights on Air Force One. And some of the issues these folks want to talk about won’t jibe with that nice accountant-next-door narrative establishment Republicans have been building.
You could make an argument that this barely subterranean point of tension was brought closer to the surface on Day 1 of the new Congress, when the GOP decided to kick off a multi-part plan to manufacture a fiscal crisis for Social Security in order to, ultimately, push through benefit cuts to what is arguably the most popular government program in U.S. history. But you’d be on even firmer ground if you just focused on what the GOP’s been up to in the past week. Take the vote in the House on Thursday to drastically curtail federal funding for abortions (which is already paltry), which passed more or less on a party-line vote, and which the White House has already said it will veto if it ever reaches Obama’s desk. Symbolic and envelope-pushing measures intended to inspire a big fight over the right to choose is the kind of stuff that thrills the Tea Party, needless to say; but it’s not what you’d expect to hear from that nice accountant next door. And that goes double for weird and recurring ontological conversations about the definition of rape.
Or if you’d rather look at the Senate, where the aforementioned McConnell is nominally in control, think about Wednesday’s vote on climate change — namely, whether it exists and, if so, to what degree it’s humanity’s fault. While it’s true that only one senator, Mississippi’s Roger Wicker, felt compelled to disagree with the contention that the Earth’s climate is warming, most Republicans voted against a provision that would credit humankind with “significantly” contributing to the problem. That is, needless to say, wildly at odds with scientific consensus across the globe; and dismissing the conclusions of essentially all of the world’s qualified scientists is yet another thing your nice neighbor-accountant would be unlikely to do.
To be fair, the Senate vote on climate change wasn’t something Republicans in the Senate forced on McConnell. Instead, it was an example of the kind of thumb-in-the-eye procedural move that the Senate’s now-minority Democrats will be able to pull off every once in a while that has no legislative significance but can, at its best, make the difference between the parties crystal clear. All the same, whatever short-term damage Democrats were able to inflict on the GOP paled in comparison to that which it brought on itself, in the form of Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe’s contention that those who think anthropogenic climate change is a reality are disrespecting God. Which is, again, not the kind of talk the GOP establishment wants to hear during this current, boring-is-best rebrand.
Now, the chances of anyone remembering any of these stories a few years from now are admittedly rather slim. So the point isn’t to say that Republicans won’t be able to succeed in 2016 because of one of the countless nutty things Inhofe’s said. What these stories underline, though, is that GOP leadership is going to find, for the umpteenth time in recent years, that persuading voters who’ve come to associate Republicans with the Tea Party that the days of Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush have returned will be much easier said than done.
Indeed, it’s a safe bet that the sentiment behind this Thursday quote from Republican congressman Charlie Dent, a relative moderate, will be echoed more than a few times by the GOP establishment between now and the next presidential election: ”Week one, we had a Speaker election that didn’t go as well as a lot of us would have liked. Week two, we spent a lot of time talking about deporting children, a conversation a lot of us didn’t want to have. Week three, we’re debating reportable rape and incest — again, not an issue a lot of us wanted to have a conversation about. I just can’t wait for week four.”
By: Elias Isquith, Salon, January 23, 2015
“Big Money’s Futile Search For A GOP Frontrunner”: There Is No Overriding Argument To Rally Republican Insiders
The New York Times has a well-reported article today outlining the desires of various Republican Party donors and bundlers to get behind a single establishment candidate in the 2016 presidential primary. There’s only one problem: That doesn’t seem remotely possible.
Yes, it makes sense to try to limit the intraparty war. The three potential establishment candidates — former Florida governor Jeb Bush, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney — would presumably compete for the same donors and voters if they all enter the race. But each of the three has his own personal ambitions, core set of loyalists, individual and institutional strengths, and potentially fatal flaws. Why should any two such candidates cede to a third? And what of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker? Ohio governor John Kasich? Florida senator Marco Rubio? If they run, each will depend in some degree on establishment support as well.
Bush has all but dared the party to nominate someone else, saying that, if he runs, he won’t court Republican base voters so eagerly that he alienates the general electorate. He refuses to abandon his commitment to Common Core educational standards, which the base has come to perceive as ideologically sketchy and governmentally oppressive. Worse, he is unabashedly pro-immigrant in a party that has concluded that, at the end of the day, it really prefers a good deportation. Bush’s description of illegal border crossing as an “act of love” will prove a constant temptation to the devil perched on the party’s shoulder. Which of the candidates competing for the base’s roar of approval will resist the temptation to label Bush a quisling in the existential war against the Other?
Christie may be even less of a sure bet. A Department of Justice investigation into his subordinates’ creepy “Bridgegate” activities is yet to be concluded. Christie’s presidential calling card — his “character” — rides on his aggressive demeanor and the results of that investigation. But a long presidential campaign seems unlikely to serve his ambition. I have never been able to get over this Christie television ad from 1994 in which he sits with his wife and baby, and proceeds to lie to the camera about two Republican primary opponents. Yes, the ad is old. Yes, the office he sought was relatively small potatoes (a county board seat). But find me another top-tier presidential candidate who has used a family tableau with his wife — let alone his infant child — to falsely attack opponents. (Christie was subsequently sued by his opponents and, remarkably, settled out of court.) Bridgegate. Babygate. All that shouting at regular people. Something is not right about this guy. A presidential campaign will almost certainly expose it — if the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey doesn’t first.
That leaves Romney. He’s competent, tried, true, tested. And the base — convinced that Romney’s 2012 outing proves that establishment candidates lack the real faith to win — will have conniptions if party elites try again to force him to the top of the Republican heap.
So if you’re a big Republican donor, or an ambitious bundler, who do you get behind? And how do you convince rival donors to join you? There is no favorite among the three, no overriding case to be made for any particular candidate. Which means that there is no overriding argument to rally Republican insiders representing various industries, regions and personal loyalties to abandon their personal stakes in one candidate and support a different candidate.
The only people who can clear the field are the candidates themselves. That’s usually the purpose of a primary. And it’s always the outcome.
By: Francis Wilkinson, The National Memo, December 8, 2014
“An Intra-Republican Bloodbath”: The 2016 Presidential Race And The Coming Death Struggle Within The GOP
There’s an interesting article in The Hill today about some early 2016 jockeying, and it shines a light on just how important this presidential campaign will be to the ongoing struggle within the GOP. Once next month’s elections are over, things are going to get very intense. Here’s an excerpt:
For the past year, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has been wooing his longtime friend Jeb Bush to jump into the 2016 presidential race, even as he has shunned potential Tea Party rivals like Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky.
Boehner stepped up his lobbying efforts this week, singing the former Florida governor’s praises in a pair of media interviews.
The Speaker’s preference for yet another Bush White House run is partly political, partly personal. He sees Bush as undeniably the strongest, most viable candidate who could pull the party together after a bruising primary and take on a formidable Hillary Clinton, sources said. And the two men are aligned politically, hailing from the same centrist strand of the GOP.
The next presidential campaign will shape how we all understand the eight-year intra-Republican bloodbath that will have lasted through the Obama presidency, in a way that the 2012 election didn’t. While most of the candidates in 2012 spent plenty of time pandering to the Tea Party, none of them were birthed by the movement. All of the real contenders had been around for a long time, some for decades.
In contrast, 2016 will be the first presidential election in which some of the GOP candidates rose to prominence after Barack Obama’s election. Three potential candidates (Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker) first got elected to their current positions during the revolution of 2010, and one other (Ted Cruz) two years later. Even if only Cruz among them is still considered a 100 percent pure Tea Partier, this is going to be a primary race defined by a generational split between those who rode the Tea Party to prominence and those who came to public attention before.
If you’re John Boehner, somebody like Ted Cruz getting the Republican nomination would be a terrible rebuke, not just because Cruz has personally been such a pain in Boehner’s behind (constantly encouraging conservative House members to turn against the Speaker), but also because of what it would say about this period in Republican history. If a real Tea Partier were elected, Boehner’s entire Speakership would look like nothing more than roadkill along the way — the “GOP establishment” had done nothing but resist the inevitable, by trying to keep the Tea Party in check, for too long. On the other hand, someone like Jeb Bush becoming president would mean that all the aggravation Boehner endured wasn’t futile; he held the barbarians back, prevented them from ruining the GOP, and the party came through on the other side by taking back the White House.
On the other hand, nothing would be worse for Boehner and other establishment figures than somebody like Bush getting the GOP nomination but then losing to Hillary Clinton — and short of a Tea Partier winning the presidency, nothing would be better for the base conservatives. Those conservatives could say: Look, we’ve tried nominating old, familiar, establishment Republicans three times in a row now, and all it got us was President Obama and now President Clinton. We can’t repeat the same mistake in 2020. It’ll be an awfully compelling argument to those in the party, even if the counter-argument — that nominating someone like Cruz would be a complete disaster — might be true.
It’s possible that a candidate who successfully bridges the two sides could emerge (for instance, Indiana governor Mike Pence could be that candidate). And the establishment folks are going to try to play down the idea that there’s any “battle for the soul of the Republican party” going on at all, since that’s a battle they aren’t sure they can win. But the battle is real, and its outcome, at least for the next decade or two, could be determined by what kind of Republican gets the 2016 nomination, whether he wins or loses, and more broadly, what kind of GOP we have in coming years.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; The Plum Line, The Washington Post, October 2, 2014
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