Like every other political writer in the country, I wrote about the establishment’s apparent reconciliation to the idea that Donald Trump could be their man for Salon today. I talk a bit about reports that fatcats are starting to sniff around Trump (a waste of time because Trump has no greed and no ego and is not subject to flattery of any kind …) And I unpack Bob Dole’s interview in the New York Times yesterday in which he, as the elderly are wont to do — and he’s always done — spills the beans about what these Republicans are really saying behind closed doors. (You have to read that whole article to get the full flavor of it)
My article picks up here:
It’s hard to wrap your mind around a party that thinks Donald Trump — King of the Birthers, the man who promises to deport 12 million Latinos, bring back torture and summary execution and bar all Muslims from entering the U.S. — is less of an extremist than Ted Cruz. Apparently all that’s fine as long as you don’t say mean things about elected officials. (And have they never heard a Donald Trump speech?)
Not to say that that Ted Cruz isn’t an extremist. Of course he is. He’s a bona fide, far-right conservative movement zealot. And sure, the party establishment has been at war with the Tea Party/Freedom Caucus types for a while now. But they haven’t come right out and openly dissed them. Suddenly, they are feeling free to do that. And that’s because they have another far right zealot to present to the rubes, one who they believe is more malleable and would by necessity be forced to turn to them for expert guidance if he were to win the nomination.
According to the National Review’s report from the GOP’s retreat last week, these people feel downright confident that Trump is such an empty suit they’ll be able to dominate him with little problem. Cruz, not so much:
The developing feeling among House Republicans? Donald Trump is preferable to Ted Cruz. “If you look at Trump’s actual policies, they’re pretty thin. There’s not a lot of meat there,” says one Republican member in Ryan’s inner circle, who requested anonymity to speak frankly about the two front-runners as leadership has carefully avoided doing all week.
If Trump were to get the nomination, he would “be looking to answer the question: ‘Where’s the beef?’ And we will have that for him,” says the member.
The member says he believes that, when it comes down to it, “almost all of the candidates would subscribe to” the conservative agenda he and the rest of leadership are hoping to advance.
Except, that is, for Cruz. “Look at the Senate. He hasn’t been a team player. He’s always been his own person with his own aspirations and his own vision, only concerned with where he wants to go. And, you know, for us, we want to work closely with the president. And with Cruz, there’s a question of whether that could happen.”
Cruz was certainly looking out for himself. But there are millions of Tea Partiers who think he was doing exactly what they sent him to Washington to do and looking out for them. Essentially, these establishment types are repudiating the conservative movement in favor of someone they clearly (and surely erroneously) see as a sort of simple clown they’ll be able to dominate once he’s in office and is dependent upon their superior knowledge and experience.
What planet are they on? Do they really look at Trump and see someone who plays well with others? Someone who isn’t a stone cold narcissist and megalomaniac who is clueless about everything important to the job he is seeking? Do they think this is all an act?
If all this is true and the establishment is truly reconciling itself to Donald Trump then Republicans have managed to be even more nihilistic and irresponsible than I ever could have believed possible. They hate Ted Cruz for being rude and self-serving more than they are concerned that Trump is promising to turn this country into an authoritarian police state.
Of course, Cruz would not be a good president. He would be a nightmare too. But I would have thought the Republicans had enough respect for themselves, their party and the movement they created to acknowledge that Ted Cruz is at least qualified to be president and be willing to lose with him rather than risk the world falling into the hands of an unhinged, messianic billionaire Bond villain. (Indeed, one would think they’d see the silver lining in losing with Cruz since the Tea Partiers would never be able to say that he lost because he wasn’t conservative enough.)
If the GOP accepts Donald Trump’s openly xenophobic, white supremacist, nationalist agenda as the Republican platform, whatever was left of sanity in the GOP is gone. They are setting their party on fire and risking immolating the whole country in the process.
Even worse, they don’t seem to care that the election of this man as president of the United States would turn the entire world order upside down overnight because everyone on the planet would assume that the world’s only superpower gone mad. And they would be right.
It’s important to note that that Trump has expressed admiration for only two leaders during this campaign: Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un. It’s highly unlikely if Trump becomes the most powerful man in the world he’ll be humbly asking the House GOP Weenie Caucus to hold his hand and tell him what to do.
And yes, in case you’re wondering, he could actually win:
IMO, GOP party elites are wrong here, but fact they think like this makes me way less skeptical of Trump’s chances. https://t.co/xl96nDevoo
