Republican Civil War

Kill the Republican Party by Electing Trump

A great many Republican voters will vote for Trump out of habit, combined with the long-held belief that the Clintons are a form of civic and personal evil.   The Republican brand is is big and powerful.   But what it stands for is at a crossroads.

Republicans need to decide who represents the party

The Republican primary campaign revealed that there is a split in the philosophy and tone of the GOP and voters need to decide which of the two Republican parties they belong in.  

There is the Republican Party of Reagan and his heirs Dole, McCain, Bush 41, Bush 43, Romney, and Paul Ryan.   They profess smaller government, fiscal prudence, lower taxes, less regulation of business, free trade,supportive of immigration,  entitlement austerity to control costs, and common cause with religious conservatives who oppose abortion and homosexuality.  In foreign policy it asserts American values and engagement in the effort to spread American democracy and contain foreign threats from Russia and anti-democratic leaders anywhere including the Middle East. A great many readers will recognize their own habitual beliefs in that suite of policies.  Does they sound familiar?  People who voted for Romney should feel more or less comfortable with those policies.  That is what Republicans voted for in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012.

There is a new Trump-style Republican Party.  It contradicts those policies.  It stands for a strong federal government that intervenes with business to protect workers, it supports protected trade rather than free trade, it opposes most immigration,  it protects Social Security and Medicare entitlements, it supports a tax policy assured to increase the deficit and it opposition to abortion and homosexuality is fragile since its main interests are economic rather than religious.  It is bellicose in foreign policy but less interested in engagement than in isolation.   Does this sound familiar?   It is Trump style Tea Party talk radio Fox News Republicanism.

Much better draw than the RNC at a moment in history

[I have been attending seminars at the Harvard JFK school.   I watched a line of perhaps 2000 people hoping to get a book signed by Bruce Springsteen on Monday.  On Tuesday I observed a line of perhaps 1000 people waiting to get into a concert by Eden, an Alternative Rock group.   Meanwhile, I was able to attend, for free, in a room with about 60 people a discussion and presentation by News Anchor Joy Reid and attend in a conference room with 25 people a frank, off the record, discussion of Republican politics with Katie Walsh, the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee (RNC), at a moment of crisis for the RNC.   I feel like I am a witness to an inflection point in history of a 150 year old political party, and as if I could visit with General Eisenhower a week before D-Day, or talk with Martin Luther King amid his discussions with LBJ on the Civil Rights act.  This is a major inflection point in history, hearing from a person in the middle of the arena, in the small room hearing from them talking about the point in controversy.  Happily for me most people would rather be somewhere else.   It is good to be a political tourist. Small crowds.  Free.  No waiting in line.]

One of many tweets by Trump

Donald Trump has declared war on the Republican Party of Romney, Ryan, McConnell, McCain.  He is no longer making common cause with them, in uneasy alliance.  He calls them the enemy.  He has tweeted that they are worse than Hillary Clinton and that now he has been "unshackled" and can speak the frank truth that Republican leadership is weak and disloyal.

The 2005 videotape gave Republican leaders a final straw excuse for pulling away from Trump but in policy terms Trump and the Republican Party had parted ways since early in the campaign when Trump fleshed out his populist agenda as opposed to the traditional GOP small government libertarian agenda.  The establishment GOP, represented by the RNC, is in a bind. They have an interest, yet they need to be respectful of their own voters.   The Republican voters chose Trump.  Trump got more votes than any other Republican candidate in history.   Political parties can represent ideas and policy and the political leaders who provide long term continuity but, at bottom, they also need to count votes and represent the will of the people who call themselves Republicans.  A great many of their voters want populist strong government, not Reagan-style small government.  

Reagan said government is the problem.  Trump says stupid selfish special interests and foreigners and criminal immigrants are the problem and strong government on behalf of the people is the solution.  So the Republican Civil War has broken out.    Is this the party of Paul Ryan or the party of Donald Trump?  

If Trump loses it may well be because of things that have little to do with policy.  It would be Trump's temperament and shock over some of his words and behavior.  It would be personal to Trump, not Trump style populism.   The election will not resolve the Civil War.  Talk Radio and Fox will continue and there will be new voices for a populist, white native born GOP.

GOP  at a Crossroads

Meanwhile, voters who were comfortable voting for Romney/Ryan in 2012 will need to decide.   Were they supportive of the policies and values Romney and Ryan voiced or have those run their course?  And are they loyal to the brand "Republican" or did they actually like what the brand represented?

My readers who watch Fox and listen to AM talk ratio have an easier choice:  vote Trump and define the GOP in the new direction.   It will be the old school Republican Reagan-Romney-Ryan voter who will have the greater problem because voting for Trump is not a vote of continuity.   It is a vote for dramatic change.   

Wait.  There is even more!   That's right, there is also a podcast.  Thad Guyer and I hash out the meaning of the current polls.  We disagree on what data is real and relevant.  We discuss the videotape and the debate and Bill Clinton and whether or not Trump can stick to issues that have popular appeal with, maybe, enough voters to get him elected.

Click Here: Disaster for Trump? Maybe not. Hear us out