You Can Stop Worrying About Trump Being the Republican Nominee. But You Can’t Stop Worrying.
by Bob Schwartz
If you were worrying about Donald Trump being the official nominee of the Republican Party, you can stop worrying about that, no matter what the results of Super Tuesday voting.
I have predicted for months that the GOP would never allow him to be its standard bearer, no matter what the delegate numbers. Whether that means changing the nominating rules, or splitting the party, or whatever, that part isn’t as clear. But the party of Lincoln and Reagan was never going to be Trump’s to represent.
The party will find a way to deny him its blessing. And then Trump will execute what has always been his contingency plan: amass as much support and publicity as possible, and then run as an independent candidate. Or maybe run as the candidate of a portion of the split Republican Party. And then win the presidency with a plurality of votes.
That’s where your worrying shouldn’t stop. Forget all the talk about people flocking to Trump because of their frustration and anger about political gridlock and ineffectiveness. You don’t have to take a deep dive into the research to see that tens of million Americans want to roll back progress not to the Reagan years, but to the years before civil rights and other modern principles of tolerance and equality. (My sad favorite remains the Trump supporter wearing a baseball cap saying “Make Racism Great Again!”).
These people may not be your friends, but they are your neighbors and fellow voters. Whether there are enough of them to elect a President of the United States is an open question. It certainly would be easier if they had the passive imprimatur of the Republican Party. But it finally appears they will not. Which is a good thing.
Unless we do have a multi-candidate election. And one of them is Donald Trump. Because one of them will win.
Interesting idea. I have a theory since I was a little guy I have always watched politics in the USA and Canada with great interest. And I have noticed that when the USA swings left Canada swings right and vice versa. Friends, Canada has swung left……..
These swings are fascinating phenomena that historians and political scientists spend entire careers studying. In Europe, we see things going both directions at the moment. One of the many differences now is that with globalization and universal media and communications, what happens in one place can instantly affect (infect?) what happens in another. The U.S. has prided itself, for the most part, in most times, for being a bastion of centrism, which was SUPPOSED to be aided by having only two parties. So how’s that going?
There is no centrism or cooperation there. Now in Europe with a true multiparty democracy cooperation, centrism is taken to a whole new level.