The horrifying outcome of Donald Trump’s victories in nine out of 11 states in Tuesday’s primaries in the United States is that he is almost certain to become the Republican candidate for the presidency. This leaves the Republican establishment with a terrible dilemma of whether to back a rogue candidate who has mocked most of their policies, or fight him to the last ditch in a national convention, which would be bizarre.
No other Republican candidate is anywhere close to catching Trump, even though Ted Cruz won in Texas and Oklahoma, and even though Marco Rubio won in Minnesota after finally attacking Trump as he should have for months. These two main rivals used the final debate before Super Tuesday to launch a full-scale attack on Trump when the leading mainstream politician Rubio made some devastating points on Trump’s business practices, and the far-right radical Cruz questioned Trump’s conservative credentials.
All to no avail. The Republicans voting in the caucuses and primaries ignored Cruz and Rubio and went off to vote in droves for the angry demagogue who has set their world alight.
Over the edge
For decades the Republican Party has been a working alliance between various factions including business interests, social conservatives and economic populists. What kept them together was that they won the presidency several times, but the impact of Barack Obama winning two presidential elections with an appeal to a new Democrat alliance of the young, minorities and women has made the Republican alliance look out of touch. The panic generated by this sense of loss created the far-Right movements from the Tea Party and evangelicals, which has tilted the party over the edge into being able to vote for someone like Trump.
Some Republicans have jumped ship and endorsed Trump, such as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. By leaving the competition early, they hope to build a special place for themselves in Trump’s future campaign and his refashioning of the Republican Party. They may well be disappointed, as Trump is not a normal party politician and works as a one-man-band that disdains party hacks.
Existential challenge
This is why a large number of senior Republicans regard Trump as an existential challenge to their party. He is no longer a joke, and many governors and senators fear that his collection of wild prejudices and accusations are about to become Republican policy. Despite their deep worries, many have remained silent for fear of a populist backlash, while only a few have denounced Trump as unfit to take on the likely Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton, who must be delighted with what is going on.
Speaker Paul Ryan laid into Trump’s anti-Muslim rant in December, and this week he tore into Trump’s failure to denounce the Ku Klux Klan. What Ryan says is particularly important as he will be responsible for managing the Republican’s national convention and developing the party’s platform for the presidential election. It will be his almost impossible job to marry Trump’s endorsement of racism, xenophobia and sexism with mainstream Republican ideals. His task will be all the harder because Trump will terrify sitting members who have seen so many of their colleagues deselected by right-wing radicals, and they will not want to be exposed to a Trump-fuelled grass roots backlash.
Hillary’s concerns
All this must be music to Hillary’s ears. She is dominating the Democratic race, but rival Bernie Sanders is winning just enough votes to make things interesting and stop the Democratic primaries becoming a HillaryFest, which would be dangerous because Hillary is vulnerable to the charge that she is taking her right to the presidency for granted and she needs to prove herself more.
But she may yet be vulnerable to legal proceedings. Mainstream Republicans are biding their time and watching FBI investigations of Hillary’s use of her private email accounts when she was secretary of state. Hillary did well to defuse the Senate committee’s attack over her emails in a marathon 10-hour session, during which she kept her cool and made the committee look petulant, and her rival Sanders has refused to attack her on the email issue, but all these political successes have not stopped due legal process.
What the Republicans hope for is that the FBI will find that Hillary has broken the law by keeping secret or government documents on a private server, and so endangered the security of the US. The Republicans are dreaming that the FBI investigations will lead to indictments in the summer and force Hillary to stand down as candidate, leaving the field open to the last remaining Democrat challenger, who will be the socialist, Sanders. If this happens after the Democratic Convention, maybe the Convention would have to be recalled to hold a wide-open vote to find a more electable opponent to Trump.
There is an ancient Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” The unfortunate American voters may be doing exactly that if one convention fails to merge a roaring demagogue with his party and the other convention is an indictment-fuelled meltdown.
