Gage Skidmore
Okay. So I said I wouldn’t make any more political predictions after boldly proclaiming Marco Rubio the Republican nominee after his strong finish in the Iowa caucuses. But then Chris Christie kept hitting the replay button in Rubio’s head and in three minutes destroyed him just before the New Hampshire primary.
Now, it looks like Donald Trump will be the Republican standard bearer in November unless he says something really stupid, which in his case would mean saying something moderate, reasonable and thoughtful. These are not qualities Trump supporters are looking for in a candidate, but Trump is not likely to disappoint them by suddenly becoming a statesman.
So, here’s my latest bold (and I hope wrong again) prediction: Despite all their desperate attempts to derail him now, the Republican establishment will jump in with both feet behind Trump.
Yes, there are reports of Mitt Romney strategizing to stop him and Mitch McConnell vowing to run away from him to save the Senate from a Democratic takeover, and even the Koch brothers are looking for an alternative. But in the end, mainstream Republicans will see a guy who will lower their taxes and cut regulations, and that is all they really care about anyway. And, I’m afraid, increasingly they’ll see a guy who can win.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of the current Republican Party that its establishment is opposing Trump right now for all the wrong reasons. It’s not because he encourages the beating of protesters at his rallies, not because he has mocked a disabled man, not because he has insulted women or threatened Muslims, not because he has mocked our veterans who were POWs, not because he preaches a xenophobia and nativism so intolerant that it brings to mind the worst of the European varieties of those awful things.
No, the Republican establishment doesn’t like Trump because he has shown a dangerous inclination to support Social Security and universal health care in some form. In other words, they oppose him precisely for the few positions on which he actually demonstrates some compassion. In my view, this actually makes them worse than Trump himself.
They also worry about Trump because they think he’ll be such a disastrous candidate that he’ll trigger a Democratic landslide that will flip the Senate to the other party. Again, not exactly a principled stand. If they thought his tirades would help their candidates they’d be all for him.
And here is my darkest prediction: They’ll change their minds. Trump has defied all political logic up until now. Why should he stop if he gets the nomination? He’s already shown some ability to sound reasonable and almost presidential when he wants to. He is a showman and a kind of actor. Once he’s secured the nomination he could take on a different role and start to win over moderates and independents by sounding like a not-so-scary man who can get things done.
And then there’s Hillary Clinton. If her emails weren’t enough, she is the quintessential establishment candidate in a year when any connection to either party’s elites is the kiss of death. She’s likely to wrest the nomination from Bernie Sanders, but not before she played the 74-year-old grumpy democratic socialist to a tie in Iowa, got crushed by him in New Hampshire and barely won in Nevada. Clinton is a competent person running in a year when competence is a liability. She is the very definition of an insider competing in a year when insiders are detested in a visceral way.
One more thing. Look for the GOP establishment to rationalize their support for a demagogue by saying that they can control him. This is exactly what the German political establishment thought about another populist demagogue who came to power in 1933. That was a man who once said, “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.”
Eventually, I think the Republican establishment will come to believe in Donald Trump. I’ve been wrong before. Let’s hope I’m wrong again.
