THE REPUBLICAN SPLIT IS BECOMING A DEEP CHASM
Ideological fissures Trump has opened in the GOP could take a generation to patch By Jonathan Martin and Michael Barbaro
Democrats are falling in line. Republicans are falling apart. Super Tuesday, the most consequential night of voting so far in the presidential campaign crystallised, in jarring and powerful fashion, the remarkably divergent fortunes of the two major parties vying for the White House.
The steady and seemingly inexorable unification of the Democratic Party behind Hillary Clinton stands in striking contrast with the rancorous and widening schisms within the Republican Party over the dominance of Donald Trump, who swept contests from the Northeast to the Deep South.
Now, as the parties gaze ahead to the fall, they are awakening to the advantages of consensus and the perils of chaos.
“If the Republican Party were an aeroplane, and you were looking out a passenger window you would see surface pieces peeling off and wonder if one of the wings or engines was next,” said Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota and a Republican candidate for president in 2012.
Even as he rolled up commanding victories in seven states, Mr Trump confronted a loud and persistent refusal to rally around him, as leading figures in his own party denounced his slow disavowal of white supremacists, elected officials boldly discouraged constituents from backing him, and lifelong Republicans declared that they would boycott the election if he is their nominee.
“I could not in good conscience vote for Trump under any circumstance,” said Blake Lichty, 33, a Republican who worked in the George W Bush administration and now lives near Atlanta. “If this becomes the Trump Party,” he added, “we’re going to lose a lot of people.”
Not since the rupture of 1964, when conservatives seized power from their moderate rivals and nominated Barry M Goldwater of Arizona, has a major party faced such a crisis of identity.
“History is repeating itself,” said historian Richard Norton Smith. “The party changed then as permanently and profoundly as can be in politics, effectively becoming two parties.”
Even as Mr Trump’s performance illustrated his strength, Ted Cruz’s success in Texas and Oklahoma underscored the broader Republican dilemma: There is no consensus among Republicans about who could be Mr Trump’s most formidable opponent, and there is probably not enough time for one to emerge.
The cultural and ideological fissures opening in the party could take a generation to patch, according to Republican leaders, historians and strategists — and many are convinced that Mr Trump will guarantee Democrats another four years in the White House.
“Nominating Donald Trump would be the best gift the Republican Party could give to Hillary Clinton,” Bobby Jindal, the former Louisiana governor, said.
Democrats are now poised to exploit a fortuitous intersection of forces: an improving economy with low unemployment; a Democratic president with a nearly 50% approval rating; a Supreme Court battle in which Republicans are energising liberal voters with vows of obstruction; and now, what is likely to be a relatively smooth nomination process that will give Ms Clinton a chance to bring together the party’s disparate strands.
“The Democrats are having a loud squabble, but the party is broadly unified behind certain themes,” said David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist. “The Republicans are engaged in a full-out civil war, fundamentally riven by mistrust, and it is very hard to see how they put the pieces back together once this fight is done.”
With every nasty turn of the Republican nominating contest, Ms Clinton’s position seems to strengthen. Day by day, the anti-Trump forces are marshalling, vowing to drag the primary process out until the convention in July.
In an extraordinary show of defiance toward a potential presidential nominee, Republican Senator Ben Sasse, wrote an open letter to Trump supporters explaining why he could not support the real estate mogul should he become the party’s nominee.
“I sincerely hope we select one of the other GOP candidates,” Mr Sasse wrote, pledging not to vote for Ms Clinton. “But if Donald Trump ends up as the nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option.”
Representative Scott Rigell of Virginia appealed to fellow Republicans in his state to reject Mr Trump, calling him “a bully unworthy of our nomination”, and New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez would not commit to supporting him if he won the nomination.
Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s vice-presidential nominee four years ago, took the unusual step of scolding the Republican front-runner from the halls of the Capitol building for failing to reject the support of David Duke.
“If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party,” Mr Ryan said, “there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry.”
In a discussion with little modern precedent, several high-profile Republicans are expressing uncertainty about how aggressively they would support Mr Trump as the nominee, suggesting they might need to lose the campaign to save the party.
“President Trump, which I don’t believe is possible, would be an unmitigated disaster and would set the party back decades,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican strategist. “It’s like a computer designed him to lose elections for us. Who does he offend? College-educated white women and Latinos, the groups we need to win.”
For now, the revulsion for Mr Trump could produce a nightmare scenario for Republicans on election day: Abandonment by rank-and-file voters who, like a growing number of party leaders, cannot stomach the concept of the mogul as their standard-bearer.
“I think it’s a sad day for the Republican Party,” said David Phillips, 72, an executive recruiter and longtime Republican from Avon, Connecticut, who called Mr Trump “a tremendous divider”.
“If he were the nominee,” he said, reluctantly, “I would probably vote for Hillary.”
They didn’t see him coming, Spectrum