National Journal
By SV Date
August 8, 2015
After
months of insults, bombast, and impressively high polling numbers,
celebrity businessman Donald Trump's graphic and sexist attack on a
well-liked Fox News anchor
will finally bring his presidential campaign tumbling down.
Or… not.
Such
is the continuing conundrum that Trump creates for Republicans: an
egotist with show-biz instincts and a willingness to spend millions of
his own money on a campaign,
and who thus far has survived unscathed despite a string of statements
that might have proved the undoing of anyone else.
Usually
when a candidate has a disastrous run of publicity, the candidate's
fundraising dries up, which ends with the candidate dropping out of the
race. In the case of
Trump, though, only a small fraction of his campaign money has come
from actual contributors.
What's
more, his big lead—heading into Thursday's first GOP debate in
Cleveland, Trump had double the support of his closest Republican rival,
winning an average 24 percent
support in recent polls—has Republicans pulling their punches. Finally,
those Trump supporters are angry not just at Democrats but also the
Republican establishment for not voicing their fears and frustrations.
In
short, his candidacy has generated little but trouble for the
Republican Party establishment since it began in June. Top party
officials had hoped to downplay its internal
divisions on issues like immigration to minimize damage heading into
the general election. Instead, Trump used his June announcement speech
to call illegal immigrants from Mexico "rapists"—and almost immediately
began moving up in the polls.
Some
GOP rivals who are similarly campaigning as "outsiders" fighting the
party leadership would love to pick up Trump's backers—and
anti-establishment street cred—whenever
Trump leaves the race. And Republican leaders looking forward to the
2016 general election worry that those who favor Trump now may not vote
at all 15 months from now or—worse still—vote instead for a third-party
Trump run.
This
caution was evident even Saturday, as neither former Arkansas Gov. Mike
Huckabee nor Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, both of whom fashion themselves as
outsiders, would criticize
Trump for his comments about Kelly.
Sen.
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush,
neither of whom is likely to pick up Trump supporters in a GOP primary,
were quick to hammer Trump.
"I
mean, do we want to win? Do we want to insult 53 percent of all voters?
What Donald Trump said was wrong. That is not how we win elections,"
Bush said during his RedState
appearance. "Mr. Trump ought to apologize."
And Graham said: "As a party, we are better to risk losing without Donald Trump than trying to win with him."
The
statements go to the heart of Trump's latest remark and why its ending
could be dramatically different than Trump's previous controversies.
“Concise coverage of everything I wish I had hours to read about."Chuck, Graduate StudentSign up form for the newsletter
Friday
night, he called into a CNN program and complained of the tough
questions Kelly had asked him a night earlier at the first GOP debate:
"You could see there was
blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever."
Trump
released a statement later claiming that "wherever" referred to Kelly's
nose, but by then, the damage had been done. Trump had been scheduled
to give the final speech
to some 800 attendees at the influential RedState Gathering, but that
invitation was rescinded by conference host Erick Erickson.
While
his comments about illegal-immigrant rapists were harsh and completely
counter to the Latino outreach the party has been working toward since
losing the 2012 election,
illegal immigrants as a group are decidedly unpopular among
conservative Republicans and, in any case, cannot vote. A month later,
when Trump declared that Sen. John McCain of Arizona was a war hero only
because he was captured and that Trump preferred people
who did not get captured, he was again attacking a target deeply
unpopular with the Republican base. McCain, despite having been tortured
for years in a North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp, has earned the
enmity of many GOP primary voters due to his support
for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
In
attacking Fox News' Megyn Kelly, though, Trump took on one of the most
popular personalities at the most influential TV network among
Republican primary voters. And
in attacking her with a middle-school-level insult, Trump has offered
up a touchstone for every woman who ever suffered similar taunts through
her teenage years—which is to say, pretty much every woman. And as Bush
alluded to, women are not just a large constituency;
they are a majority of voters.
All
of which means that whatever exceedingly slim possibility Trump had to
win the presidency has likely moved even closer to zero—but it does not
necessarily mean that
the Republican Party's torment is about to end.
The
Trump campaign is like nothing else in recent memory. Other than to
"make America great again," he has articulated no vision or policy
goals. Other than calling his
opponents names—"dummy," "loser"—he has done little to contrast himself
with other Republican candidates. Even the fact that he has chosen the
Republican Party to run in, despite his campaign contributions through
the years to Democrats, has little in the
way of historical precedent.
"I
wanted to give the man a lot of latitude because I know he taps into
some anger that even I share," Erickson told the RedState audience
Saturday morning before explaining
Trump was disinvited.
That
anger, and Trump's ability to write his own campaign checks, means he
isn't going anywhere. He can continue flying on his personal 757 jet to
Iowa, New Hampshire,
and the other early states, can continue paying staff to organize
supporters and build a get-out-the-vote operation, can even start buying
intensive television ads. And, as long his polling support nationally
keeps him in the top 10 of the 17 candidates, he
is likely to win a spot at the next televised GOP debate next month in
California.
How
much is Trump willing to spend of his fortune to keep going? Will he
lose interest if he starts falling in the polls? Or will he only start
lashing out even more aggressively?
The
answers to these questions are of enormous import to Republican Party
leaders desperate to avoid a repeat of the long, ugly primary season of
2012. Unfortunately for
them, the answers are known only to Trump himself—and it's entirely
possible that he has given them little or no thought.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment