Republicans fret as Donald turns from Trump card to joker in the pack
Republican Party leaders agonise over the prospect that Donald Trump will mount a third-party candidacy that could undermine their nominee. They fear insulting the white working-class voters who admire him. They are loath to tangle with a threat-flinging firebrand for whom there are no rules of engagement.
Since the start of Mr Trump’s presidential campaign, a vexing question has hovered over his candidacy: Why have so many party leaders — privately appalled by Mr Trump’s remarks about immigrants from Mexico — not renounced him?
It turns out, interviews show, that the mathematical delicacy of a Republican victory in 2016 — and its dependence on ageing, anxious white voters — make it exceedingly perilous for the Republican Party to treat Mr Trump as the pariah many of its leaders now wish he would become.
Even as a cascade of corporations and business partners — from NBC and Macy’s to the chefs at two planned restaurants — rush to sever their ties with him, Republican leaders seem deeply torn and paralysed by indecision.
A few weeks ago, those divisions were on vivid display at a regular gathering of top Republican elected officials, strategists and the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Over dinner at the Hay-Adams Hotel opposite the White House, some argued for a swift response, fearing Mr Trump would mar the coming Republican presidential debates with his needless provocations. Others counselled a hands-off approach, fearing attempts to rein him in would only turn him into a political martyr and, worse, tempt him toward that third-party run.
No consensus was reached, and the party chairman, Reince Priebus, left with no clear directive, according to two attendees at the dinner.
Dispirited party elders, worried that Republicans are handing Democratic rivals a powerful campaign weapon by allowing Mr Trump’s voice to be depicted as representative of the party, are sounding the alarm with growing urgency.
“The Republican Party is making a mistake if they think they can just remain quiet when he speaks up, or to demur or to just lightly distance themselves,” said Peter Wehner, a former official for presidents Ronald Reagan and George W Bush. “He’s doing tremendous damage.”
Mr Trump, a New York developer, reality television host and political provocateur, shows no signs of backing off from his remarks, made during his announcement of a campaign for the White House three weeks ago.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said then. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems. And they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
In the days after, there has been a striking absence of public denunciations of Mr Trump from leading Republican candidates for president and the party’s top officials in Washington. Only last weekend did Jeb Bush — after a muted earlier response — call the “rapists” comment “extraordinarily ugly” and “not reflective of the Republican Party”.
But Mr Priebus took a quieter route on Wednesday in a brief telephone conversation with Mr Trump, urging him to soften his tone on immigrants even as he offered praise of his candidacy.
In classic form, though, Mr Trump quickly thanked the party chairman with acerbic broadsides that could discourage similar attempts to rein him in. Mr Trump reached out to a reporter to say the call was “congratulatory” not condemnatory, and posit that Mr Priebus “knows better than to lecture me”.
He added, “We’re not dealing with a fivestar army general.”
Mr Trump’s language about Mexicans highlighted two of the most divisive issues within the Republican coalition — race and immigration. It was Mr Priebus who led a bracing review of the party’s 2012 losses, resulting in dire warnings about its need to improve its standing with Hispanics. But Mr Trump’s support is expected to draw heavily from those disaffected white voters who lined up behind Mitt Romney in 2012 — and whom Republicans acknowledge they will need again to recapture the White House in 2016.
But any top-down campaign by Republicans to marginalise Mr Trump might encourage him to follow through with a threat to run on a third-party ballot, a scenario reminiscent of Ross Perot’s 1992 campaign, which diverted crucial votes from president George Bush. Many in the party still blame Mr Perot, who won 19% of the vote, for Mr Bush’s defeat to Bill Clinton.
Mr Trump’s possible impact dividing the field is reason enough for Republicans not to attack him, said Thomas M Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia. “You’ve got to keep him in the tent,” he said. “He just wreaks havoc, and every vote he takes comes out of our hide.” © 2015 The New York Times