Republicans! Trump is the man of your dreams

As Novem­ber approach­es and the Unit­ed States gears to pick its next pres­i­dent, bat­tle lines are being drawn not only across Amer­i­ca, but also with­in the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Senior par­ty lead­ers are band­ing togeth­er to chal­lenge Don­ald Trump’s mete­oric ascen­sion to the Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. With 20 pri­ma­ry wins under his belt, Trump now enjoys the sup­port of 736 del­e­gates with Texas Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz fol­low­ing with 463 and Ohio Gov­er­nor John Kasich with 143. It is laugh­able to call it a 3‑corner race as the real estate mag­nate has main­tained a sig­nif­i­cant lead, with the Repub­li­can Par­ty con­ven­tion in July draw­ing near.

Yet his rhetoric dri­ven cam­paign, inflam­ma­to­ry mes­sages against minori­ties and lack of a pol­i­cy agen­da, has spooked Repub­li­can lead­ers with the prospect of the par­ty being divid­ed in an elec­tion year, aban­don­ing the Cen­tre-Right and becom­ing defined by Brand Trump for years to come.

Promi­nent Con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers held a meet­ing in Wash­ing­ton ear­li­er this month for a ‘uni­ty tick­et’ against Don­ald Trump, lob­by­ing del­e­gates and oth­er Repub­li­cans to choose a ‘real’ Con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date at the par­ty con­ven­tion to take on the Democ­rats. Ex-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Mitt Rom­ney and John McCain have issued a warn­ing to the Repub­li­can Par­ty over pitch­ing Trump, while a major­i­ty of Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates pushed out of the race have swung their sup­port behind Ted Cruz, hop­ing he clos­es the gap before July.

How­ev­er, the pop­u­lar will back­ing Trump is strong. His brand of pol­i­tics has res­onat­ed among mul­ti­ple age and social groups includ­ing minori­ties as he con­tin­ues to pick del­e­gates from states with dif­fer­ent demo­graph­ic set­tings. The anti-Trump cam­paign despite being loud, is also fail­ing to pick up steam as many Repub­li­can lead­ers are choos­ing to remain neu­tral. Even John Kasich, who per­sists in the race despite dis­mal sup­port, has reject­ed over­tures from the anti-Trump brigade to drop out and join them. He may tell the cam­eras he’s the best can­di­date to stop Trump, but he clear­ly does not want to irk the Repub­li­can front run­ner. It’s log­i­cal. The White House has been out of the hands of the Repub­li­cans for eight years, and many can­not ignore the will of the vot­er base, espe­cial­ly when Trump enjoys a sig­nif­i­cant lead. Any attempt to stall the nom­i­na­tion at the par­ty con­ven­tion will look like pure sab­o­tage. Trump sparked moral out­rage when he told CNN that such a move would cause riots, yet the Repub­li­can Par­ty can­not under­mine the back­lash they may face.

The best line this week on the state of the Repub­li­cans comes from Hillary Clin­ton, who said, “With Trump, Repub­li­cans reap what they sow”. The state­ment is apt for a par­ty that effec­tive­ly pre­pared the plat­form for the rise of Don­ald Trump’s polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive, grant­i­ng him the recipe to which he added his flair and now dom­i­nates the right wing.

The Repub­li­cans have always said that the mil­i­tary and econ­o­my of the Unit­ed States has been on the decline, a pitch used as a direct attack on social wel­fare spend­ing under Demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments. The sen­ti­ment can be traced back to the Rea­gan years and is vehe­ment­ly cham­pi­oned by Trump who repeat­ed­ly says, “We don’t win any­more” along with his
infa­mous cam­paign slo­gan ‘Make Amer­i­ca Great Again’. In their cam­paign against the wel­fare state, Repub­li­cans have always tout­ed the bogie of ‘Wash­ing­ton insid­ers’ play­ing vote bank pol­i­tics and the need to run the coun­try like a busi­ness. Trump oozes that very idea, high­light­ed in an inter­view to the New York Times in 1999 where he said,

“My entire life, I’ve watched politi­cians brag­ging about how poor they are, how they came from noth­ing, how poor their par­ents and grand­par­ents were. And I said to myself, if they can stay so poor for so many gen­er­a­tions, maybe this isn’t the kind of per­son we want to be elect­ing to high­er office. How smart can they be? They’re morons.”

Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Repub­li­can lead­ers have always called for an end to polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, as a tac­tic to prop up their con­tro­ver­sial argu­ments on same-sex rights, minori­ties, gun con­trol, abor­tion and racial vio­lence. Trump is any­thing but polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect. It is his most endear­ing qual­i­ty as a real­i­ty TV star and not sur­pris­ing­ly a
Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date. Ask Trump sup­port­ers, and their first line of praise is — ‘He speaks his mind’.

In Trump, the Repub­li­cans see the mon­stros­i­ty of their polit­i­cal stance, shed of all fil­ters – their vot­ers ral­ly­ing around a Repub­li­can leader who is not the run-of the-mill sil­ver-tongued preach­er but an auda­cious self-styled God­man. Trump has just stepped up the out­rage, sharp­ened and prej­u­diced the Repub­li­can plot. The par­ty may feel his man­ner is ‘brazen’ and ‘unpres­i­den­tial’ yet for all inten­sive pur­pos­es it is the orig­i­nal Repub­li­can mes­sage. They must realise that Don­ald Trump is the man of their dreams. His ascen­sion to the nom­i­na­tion is noth­ing short of des­tiny.