Moderate Republican For Trump: Only Trump Can Restore GOP Sanity... By A Landslide Loss
We Are Known By The Company We Keep: Evangelicals LOVE Trump!
OCT 22, 2015
They’ll only get more extreme: After Donald Trump or Ben Carson loses in a landslide, here’s how the right will spin it
Pundits predict an electoral drubbing will break the far right's fever. Here's why they're far too optimistic
Donald Trump and Ben Carson are the clear frontrunners in the Republican presidential race. It’s possible – perhaps even probable – that one of them could actually win the nomination.
It was thought that Trump’s political star was fading, that conservatives had finally grown tired of his screwy shtick. But that’s not the case. After dipping momentarily, Trump’s national lead is creeping back up. The latest ABC/Washington Post pollshows Trump at 32 percent, well above the rest of the field. (Carson is comfortably in second with 22 percent support.)
GOP insiders have been waiting patiently for Trump and Carson to implode. And there’s an argument to be made that Trump and Carson are like previous Republican candidates who caught fire early in the race but inevitably foundered when voters started paying attention – e.g., Herman Cain or Michelle Bachmann or Fred Thompson. But this time may be different.
If you look at how the race is shaping up, it’s hard to see how Trump or Carson fall anytime soon. The early primaries are key, both in terms of fundraising and momentum, and Trump and Carson are well-positioned. In Iowa, New Hampshireand South Carolina, Trump and Carson are dominating. Both, moreover, are appealing to conservatives in every corner of the country, from Massachusetts toNevada to Arizona to Florida. They’re not regional candidates, in other words – they can win everywhere.
These numbers ought to terrify the Republican establishment. If either Trump or Carson become the nominee, the GOP will lose in a landslide. The conservative base is comfortable nominating political neophytes for president, but the rest of the country is not. Once the nation sees how breathtakingly ignorant Carson and Trump are in comparison to a Clinton or a Sanders, both of whom have actual political experience, the choice will be obvious.
There are, however, serious conservatives who despise Trump but see a silver lining in his nomination. In July, Bruce Bartlett penned an essay for Politico in which he argued that a massive loss by Trump in a general election would, ultimately, be a good thing for the GOP. Bartlett writes:
The Republican establishment foresees a defeat of Barry Goldwater proportions in the unlikely event Trump wins the Republican presidential nomination. As Trump’s lead in the polls grows, so too does their panic. Yet, for moderate Republicans, a Trump nomination is not something to be feared but welcomed. It is only after a landslide loss by Trump that the GOP can win the White House again. Trump’s nomination would give what’s left of the sane wing of the GOP a chance to reassert control in the wake of his inevitable defeat, because it would prove beyond doubt that the existing conservative coalition cannot win the presidency. A historic thrashing of the know-nothings would verify that compromise and reform are essential to recapture the White House and attract new voters, such as Latinos, who are now alienated from the Republican Party.
I understand Bartlett’s logic, but this borders on wishful thinking. This isn’t 1964, the year Goldwater ran for president. We live in a new political reality, with a completely different information infrastructure. Conservatives, far more than liberals, live in an echo chamber. As Bartlett acknowledges, the “nutty ideas” animating the Republican base have become “staples of Fox News programming, which is the primary source of information for most conservatives.”
No matter what happens in the general election, then, conservatives will find a way to collectively avoid the truth – and Fox News and right wing talk radio will gladly help them.
But let’s indulge Bartlett’s hypothesis. Say Donald Trump wins the nomination and then loses badly to the Democratic nominee. Conservative Republicans can interpret this loss in two ways. On the one hand, they can say, as Bartlett hopes, that Trump lost because he’s too extreme, too unhinged in his views on immigration and women and practically everything else. On the other hand, they can say that Trump lost because he wasn’t extreme enough, because he didn’t double down on whatever they think conservatism is. You can hear the refrain now: Trump used to be pro-choice. He’s anti-trade. He endorsed single-payer health care. He’s not Christian enough.
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