Trump is making the Republican Party look ridiculous
Are America’s two main parties both intent on throwing this election away? You’d think so from their campaigns, said Charles Krauthammer in the National Review. The Democrats are poised to nominate Hillary Clinton, an “unloved, untrusted” candidate “living under the shadow of an FBI investigation”. Any of a dozen Republican candidates could beat her. Yet who is the GOP set to nominate to take her on? The unhinged Donald Trump, whose campaign to date has consisted of little more than a series of “outrageous provocations”. Last week Trump appalled critics again, by attacking a judge who is hearing a class-action lawsuit against his now-defunct Trump University, a for-profit education company set up in 2005 to offer courses in real estate. Trump claimed Judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased against him because “he’s a Mexican”. Republican leaders lined up to condemn the remark. House Speaker Paul Ryan called it “the textbook definition of a racist comment”, while Senator Lindsey Graham described it as “the most un-american thing from a politician since Joe Mccarthy”.
The vehement reaction of Republican leaders to Trump’s latest comment will have surprised many people, said Michael Gerson in The Washington Post. After all, this is hardly the first time Trump has appealed to “nativist” sentiments during this campaign. So what has changed? The answer is that Trump is now the party’s presumptive nominee, so his behaviour reflects more directly on the GOP. The Republican establishment appears “to have believed that it had an implicit pact (unbeknownst to Trump) that he could have the party so long as he didn’t embarrass it too badly”, said Rich Lowry on Politico.com. The breach of this “imaginary agreement” has now led to some “epic ducking and covering”, with Republican politicians drawing legalistic distinctions between supporting, but not endorsing, Trump.
Many still hope Trump will evolve into a more disciplined, dignified candidate, said Josh Barro in Business Insider, but they’re kidding themselves. “Trump’s entire track record in public life is about being crass, mercurial and dishonest.” He’s not going to change. The GOP will never unify around Trump, agreed David Brooks in The New York Times. Quite apart from ideology, his “pathological” personality – the bragging, the “need to destroy allies and hog the spotlight” – make him a hopeless team player.
The GOP’S efforts to accommodate Trump are making it look ridiculous, said Thomas L. Friedman in the same paper. Senator John Mccain didn’t break under torture from the North Vietnamese, but his hunger for re-election is so great today that he has now endorsed Trump; so has Marco Rubio, the man who called Trump a “con man” when he stood against him. By falling into line, GOP leaders are just proving the point that drew voters to Trump in the first place: that Republican politicians believe in nothing but power. The GOP needs to be shut down and replaced with a new centre-right party.
A third-party run would help many conservatives out of a dilemma, said Ramesh Ponnuru in National Review. No longer would they face an invidious choice between Trump or Clinton. But given that there’s no sign of a third-party run happening, GOP politicians will just have to choose sides. As for voters, they don’t have to back anyone. “In the special, and, let’s hope, not to be repeated circumstances of this year, they may reasonably decide that they will not join their will to either outcome.” This may be an election when it’s better not to vote.