You may have seen that dozens of prominent Republicans are circulating a petition calling on the Republican National Committee to cut funding for Donald Trump’s campaign and divert it to saving increasingly vulnerable House and Senate Republicans. The list of signatories includes nearly twenty former employees of the RNC which signals that the Establishment is completely hostile to Trump’s campaign and that the petition will no doubt have plenty of saliency and resonance with the current Republican National Committee staff.
Compare this situation to a few highly placed DNC staff sending emails that demonstrate a bias in favor of Hillary Clinton.
More than that, though, since two wrongs don’t make a right, consider how rank-and-file Trump-supporting Republicans must feel about this blatant lobbying of the RNC by former RNC staffers to sabotage Trump’s campaign.
I know Trump is a dangerous lunatic but he did get a lot of votes. In fact, he exceeded 13 million votes in the primaries which really is the most in history. He may hype that accomplishment a little more than is warranted (e.g., he received a smaller percentage of the popular vote than Bush, McCain or Romney), but it’s nothing to be sneezed at. There are 13 million voters who cast a vote for Trump and most of them are probably still hoping that he can win the presidency. Almost all of them probably like Trump more than the people who are pushing this petition or the current RNC chairman, Reince Priebus.
I guess what I’m saying is that it makes a little bit of sense to devote RNC resources to candidates who have a better chance of winning than Trump, but it’s not some kind of magic way to fix the Republicans’ problems. It will split the party and really piss off its most energized voters. Whatever the GOP gains by allocating resources a little more sensibly will be lost by cratering turnout.
Imagine if Sanders had won the nomination, was trailing badly in the polls, and a bunch of Establishment Dems and former DNC members were calling for Sanders to be abandoned in favor of more mainstream House and Senate candidates. It wouldn’t make things any better and would most likely make things worse.
I don’t give these petitioners and signatories a whole lot of credit for opposing Trump since they’re primarily concerned about preserving the power of the Republican Party, but I acknowledge that they’re taking a stand against Trumpism. The problem is that Trumpism is what’s for dinner with the Republican base.
There’s no getting around that.
Than again, Trump isn’t even spending the money he has now.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/290834-analysis-trump-campaign-has-spent-0-on
-television
Why bother to give him more money if he’s just going to sit on it?
That’s a good point, and I wondered about that, as well. Frankly, should Trump manage to win (shudder, please no), then it stands to reason that he should want a GOP majority in at least the House.
Spending money on down ticket races actually makes sense for Trump, as well as for the RNC.
I guess it’s all in how you view this manuever. But since Trump is hoarding cash, then it it seems like it doesn’t really need it anyway. Certainly, if I was involved in the RNC (totally hypothetically), that’s the way I’d spin it.
It worked out fine for the media political TV advert sales during the primary season. Trump brought the eyeballs and the others brought the bucks*. Not surprising that the MSM would turn on Trump once those other money spigots were turned off and he is indicating no ability to or interest in turning on a Trump tap. So, he ramps up his level of outrageousness to hold onto the eyeballs and the media ramps up it outrage to add a few more eyeballs. Nice little business model.
Check out the totals for the Also-Rans. ‘Lil Marco and Jeb? spent a combined $325 million. And the dollars spent on the Democratic side were in total almost as much, but HRC alone will hold up the Democratic side for TV ad space.
I’d be extremely pissed, but I’m not sure I would be less likely to vote. In fact now that I’m thinking on it, it’d make me more likely to vote for Sanders.
Corbyn over in the UK is facing a similar revolt, and yet he continues to destroy his opponents within the party. At the same time, it is completely sabotaging his party. Labour would rather lose with Corbyn, maybe even destroy the party in totality, than continue with the will of the voters. And the Tories are clanging their glasses under a far right wing radical. I’ve been to London once, and I’ll never forget the day I went to parliament listening to Theresa May speaking about “women’s rights”. Women’s rights are in quotes because she sounded like Phyllis Schlafly to me.
May is now reacting to the UK mood by taking on some very social democratic coloring, in fact, pushing
as well as a smooth and no doubt insincere line about inequality.
Never forget when you’re thinking about Britain and Europe that they have their basic welfare-state protections in place already, and no “conservative” party really dares to threaten them (though in UK itself the Tories and Blairites have managed to wreak a lot of damage to the structure). This makes it hard for a truly socialist party to get a foothold against “conservative” issues like hatred for immigrants, because voters are thinking “I’ve already got mine” and the Tories aren’t going to take it away (though Thatcher showed they would if they got the chance).
Isn’t this just a natural corrective action by a party apparatus?
I mean, yes, it works against the “direct democracy” elements of the primary process, but presumably the party framework exists for a purpose like this — for exactly this kind of situation.
It’s like having a company with a CEO and a power structure, but having a board of directors (which is a different group of people). The RNC is saying, wait; something’s gone wrong; we have to try to fix it.
I don’t see anything wrong with this, procedurally. They’re not usurping anyone else’s power. They’re not interfering — they’re using their position to attempt to persuade. It’s not the same thing — it’s legit.
It’s quite pragmatic to ignore 13 million base voters. Where are the gonna go?
To be clear, BooMan seems to be suggesting that there’s a lack of propriety here, or an overreach — that it’s “not their place” to do this.
And I disagree. This is what party apparatus is for.
It’s not the same as messing around with the actual primaries to manipulate the results and weigh them toward a favored candidate. That’s always going to be on the edge of dirty pool, even if it doesn’t violate the letter of party rules, it goes against the spirit (as many have argued about the Sanders stuff).
But this is different. Nobody’s manipulating votes. They’re making recommendations about the money, which is their right. As in my example above, they’re saying, yes, you’re overseeing a vote-based system, but this is an egregious set of circumstances where you should feel free to do something if you feel it’s warranted. (It’s like “jury nullification.”)
And no complaints when the 13M only vote the top of the ticket?
It’s politics, Jordan. Boo’s not talking about the propriety of the gesture, but the effect it’ll have on the Trump voters when Donald comes out denouncing the Dolchstoß.
Well, it’s one thing to petition, I suppose, and another to actually follow through.
But, musing about counter messaging Sanders by attacking his faith is pretty bad but nowhere near as extreme as cutting him off from support after he’s secured the nomination.
Josh Marshall has something related to say. Excerpt:
“[T]he GOP is now a Trumpite party and will remain a Trumpite party. To get a little more specific, this means that the white ethno-nationalist party which Trump has brought out of the shadows and mobilized is now and will continue to be the Republican party.”
He’s far from alone. Several bloggers and commentators of different ideological perspectives have noted that the GOP has devolved into little more than a white nationalist party, along the lines of Front National (France), UKIP (United Kingdom) or Jobbik (Hungary), and so on. Might as well call it what it is and be done with it. Might as well also accept that this is what the GOP is going to be for the foreseeable future. Whether the Democratic Party moves from being a primarily centrist party to one that can embrace at least some genuinely left policy positions remains to be seen. Sanders gave it his all this year, and in fairness the platform concessions Sanders was able to win this year ain’t bad. In the meantime, we have a choice between what amounts to a third Obama term or a wannabe Putin. Under the circumstances, a third Obama term looks appealing.
The GOPadammerung approaches.
Another extension of this particular riff:
Now that would be a wave election!
Apparently Trump has just been wrong-footed into supporting trial of US citizens for terrorism offences by military tribunal at Guantanamo:
‘Fine’ but for the US Constitution, I suppose. Your move, Rudy, tell us what he really meant. Newt? Anyone game to argue Trump is not a nincompoop.
That’s not “wrong-footed” as far as Republicans are concerned.
Heck, some of them would support military tribunals for civilian citizens, at least in cases where the regular courts couldn’t be trusted to hand down the “right” verdict.
Trump’s adulating fan-base is in full support of this. Why wouldn’t they be? It’s not just Trump. The GOP has been pushing this kind of unconstitutional nonsense for years now.
I’m utterly unsurprised by this; would expect nothing different.
Many in the GOP – beyond the white supremacist/nationalist base – also agree with this. This is who the GOP is and has been for quite some time.
There are a large portion of Trump supporters who view Trump an an insurgent candidate aligned in opposition to an establishment that they hate. This kind of thing is going to drive them away from the rest of the party. They’ll to show up to vote for Trump but NOT for any of the down ballot Republicans.
For the traditional core of GOP voters, having Trump at the top of the ticket is demoralizing. A significant number of them aren’t going to show up to vote at all.
Trump is a disaster for the party going both ways.
I think polling has a hard time capturing this dynamic. All it takes is for those two groups to total 3 to 4 percent of the GOP electorate for the election to turn into total flame out carnage. And the almost complete lack of GOTV machinery for the Trump campaign puts us way off map for predicting voter turnout.
In a country of over 320 million, it only takes a few million to make it completely insane. The political system is FUBAR.
Yes, but the GOP is entirely responsible for those few million voters who went for Trump in a big way. The GOP, and their house organ Fox, very deliberately used the Southern Strategy to gin & rile up this base. They’ve catered and kow-towed and fluffed them.
The whole past 8 years they’ve behaved so terribly. Completely de-legitmizing Obama (I’m not his hugest fan, but he won fair and square), complete obstructionism, all while encouraging out loud racism and all the rest.
This is who the GOP is. It’s really time to acknowledge that and see them for the rump party they’ve become.
If the Republican Party doesn’t support Trump, then they risk losing those Trump folks, and they are pretty much the core of what is the party.
Things could go wrong, but someone will come along to represent represent racists.
What I see, and what I suppose a lot of people have seen this cycle, is how much the party apparatus is separated from the voters. This is not generally a good thing for the two-party duopoly. How this will play out I don’t know, but I suspect that the Clinton coalition will be splintering about the time she declares war on Russia.
Did anyone see that we’re bombing Libya again, and that we’ve got special forces on the ground there?
Yes. I saw that about Libya. Hip hip hooray… but it’s lost in the bullshit ratched up by Trump. Maybe the Clintons are paying him off?? (don’t pile on; it’s a Friday)
Declaring war on Russia would be the act of someone who is mentally unhinged.
Of the two leading candidates, there is only one who is mentally unhinged. His name is Donald Trump. And he would appear to be Vladimir Putin’s BFF.
Complete the syllogism.
Folks like Bob have built such a caricature of HRC that they insist on making these kinds of assertions that leave no room for the possibility that they might be wrong.
Bob has convinced himself that HRC will, without a doubt, declare war on Russia, a nuclear power.
New Yorker essay:
“Let’s assume that what he’s really focussed on isn’t winning this year’s election, a task he now realizes is beyond him, but creating a long-term Trumpian movement. A nationalistic, nativist, protectionist, and authoritarian movement that will forever be associated with him, but which also has the capacity to survive beyond him. A movement that in some ways would resemble other right-wing political parties around the world, such as France’s National Front, Austria’s Freedom Party, and the U.K. Independence Party, but which would also harken back to earlier moments in American history, such as the rise of the anti-immigrant Know Nothing movement of the eighteen-forties, and the formation, a century later, of the isolationist America First Committee, which sought a negotiated peace with Hitler.”
Trump can’t even focus on Tomorrow’s dinner.
to give the writer some credit, Joel left off the beginning of the quote
>>just for the sake of argument, let’s assume that Trump is smarter and less myopic than he seems. Let’s assume that what he’s really focussed on isn’t winning this year’s election…
I guess if you’re a writer with a cushy gig at the New Yorker, you can get away with this kind of counterfactual silliness.
but like you say, there is zero evidence that Trump is smarter than he seems or that he’s capable of long term focus.
What’s counterfactual, please? I understand it’s speculative, but not unreasonably speculative. The Trump platform, to use the term loosely, in fact has a similar feel to it as the National Front in France. And people vote National Front commonly for similar reasons of alienation.
we’re drawing the line between speculative and unreasonable in a different place.
I think you have to be a little too loose to call his spewings a platform, other than the anti-immigration part.
Many other countries have a political system with more room for small parties. If the US was like that I’d be more worried about Trump leading a National Front and continuing to cause trouble.
Don’t forget what the alternatives were. Elliott Weinberger reminds us here:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n15/eliot-weinberger/they-could-have-picked
what a clueless fool or brazen liar Reince Priebus (or is it Rience Preibus . . . Rinse Prius???) was when he spewed:
When it was obvious from the get-go here in the Reality-Based Community that what they had was a clown-car stuffed to the gills* with ridiculous clowns.
*yeah, yeah, I know, mixing my metaphors; deal with it
…”stuffed to the grille”?