Why it’s smart politics for GOP leaders to cut Trump loose

Yahoo News wrote:Why it’s smart politics for GOP leaders to cut Trump loose
Matt Bai

Like many of you, I took a short summer vacation last week, hoping to clear my mind of politics and draw some perspective on human affairs from the calming rhythm of the ocean.

Except that all anyone on the beach seemed to be talking about was a certain loudmouth celebrity, and all the surf shops were selling “Make America Great Again” T-shirts, and all the kids were building “huge” sand castles with walls around them.

Even the clouds overhead seemed to assume a certain Trumpian shape this season, like wispy comb-overs drifting out to sea.

It brings me no pleasure to report that Trump has achieved his ultimate goal in life (and of his campaign), which is to become the most unavoidable human on the planet. When it comes to his lesser objective of actually becoming president, however, success is lookingmore remote.

If last year gave us the Summer of Trump, then this is the Summer of Trump’s Unwinding.

Even as I sat on the beach, in what was supposed to be among the least eventful weeks in any presidential year, Trump suggested that some gun lover might just have to assassinate his opponent, then managed to push that controversy aside with an accusation that President Obama literally founded ISIS, then said he was only being sarcastic, then said not that sarcastic, then declared himself the victim of a media conspiracy.  [sic--swear to god]

(This last part would have been more convincing had Trump not premised his entire campaign on exploiting celebrity-obsessed media for free coverage, without which he would by now be back to the business of pretending to fire game-show contestants from pretend jobs.)

All of which brings me back to this question of why Republican leaders in Washington continue to stand with Trump. I’ve already made the case, both seriously and satirically, that their endorsements are morally unsound and reckless for the country.

Increasingly, though, it seems to me that on a purely strategic level, where the future of the party is concerned, the never-abandon-ship approach is making less and less sense.

Quill ed: I agree.  It's committing suicide for the Repuglican Party to continue with this farcical comedy!  But they are so used to lying, that they believe, if not the lies, the validity of lying as a practice.

It’s easy to see how Trump’s candidacy might put you in an impossible position if you’re running for reelection to the Senate in, say, New Hampshire or Florida. You really can’t win if you antagonize either Trump loyalists or Trump haters, so you start to say stuff that makes you sound lobotomized, like: I’m going to help Trump become president so I can then thwart his ambitions.  (No joke — this is exactly the desperate logic that Kelly Ayotte, New Hampshire’s poor junior senator, tried out the other day. We’ll see how that goes.)

My favorite new entry in the awkward-straddling category, by the way, comes from Mark Sanford, the always interesting South Carolina congressman, who wrote in a sober op-ed this week that while he supports Trump, he remains deeply troubled by the nominee’s refusal to turn over his tax returns.

Let me get this straight: You’re OK with him sort of banning Muslims from the country, or attacking a judge for being of Mexican descent, or accusing the president of organizing terrorists, or hinting at the necessity of political violence, or mocking the disabled, or not knowing the first thing about the nuclear arsenal. Check, check, check, check, check and check.

But you’re holding the line at him not disclosing his effective tax rate. Because that’s just un-American.

Leaving all that aside, though, let’s focus for the moment on Paul Ryan, the nominal leader of what used to be called the Republican establishment in Washington, before the Trump family staged its shareholder revolt.

Ryan’s calculation, in concert with fellow Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Reince Priebus, seems to be that anything is better than all-out disunity. Trump has, after all, brought legions of new voters into the Republican fold this year, and he’s a powerful lure for small-dollar fundraising.

If you reject all that, the thinking goes, you risk inciting a new wave of divisive and potentially calamitous primaries in House and Senate races. Trump’s probably not going to win in November anyway, and party leaders want to be able to move on with an intact party and maybe even an expanded, energized base.

But let me offer an alternative way to look at it. Because it seems to me that this strategy ignores everything we know about pop-up political movements fueled by a combination of rage and Wi-Fi.

What Republicans should have learned from the tea party uprising is that you don’t really appease or absorb these kinds of rebellions. Their guiding principle is to upend party establishments, which is why John Boehner is home in Ohio now, despite having twisted himself like a yogi to avoid alienating the party’s angriest new voices.

Ron Paul’s voters didn’t become party loyalists. Neither did Ted Cruz’s. And Trump’s won’t, either.

Ryan could spend every one of the next 81 days campaigning for Trump, and Trump’s new voters would still walk away looking for ways to blow up the status quo, or else they’d walk away from politics entirely. What they won’t do is suddenly see the wisdom of responsible governance and run down to the local party office to see how they can help reelect their congressman.

Quill ed: The same may be said about Bernie Sanders voters, which is why I didn't trust them to do what they said, in the first place.  They weren't going to be there tomorrow, or any other time requiring responsibility!

On the other hand, by not more explicitly renouncing Trump’s increasingly appalling campaign, Ryan and the others may well be fumbling the more genuine opportunity to expand their party’s appeal.

More and more Americans, and particularly younger voters, are wary of party politics, mainly because they suspect — rightly — that leaders too readily subvert Americans’ overarching interests to their own partisan agendas. This is, at the moment, a much larger problem for Republicans than it is for Democrats.

According to the latest data from Pew Research, only about a third of the public sees the Republican Party favorably. (The Democratic number is more than 10 points higher.)

If Ryan, as the country’s ranking Republican, were to finally say enough is enough — that, whatever the consequences to himself or his party, he could no longer endorse Trump’s candidacy and hope to teach his children anything about decency and public service at the same time — then he would send a powerful signal to those voters. He’d be saying that conscience still exists in politics, which is exactly what Cruz got across in his convention speech, and I’m betting it serves him well.

If you want to know what standing on principle does to your credibility with voters, look at John Kasich in Ohio. He pointedly declined to endorse Trump or attend his convention down the street, and his approval rating is near 60 percent while other governors are tanking.

Oh, that’s right, I forgot. Ohio doesn’t look anything like the rest of America. Never mind.

Trump may yet have a surge in him; I’m not saying he doesn’t.

But it sure looks like the ship is going down, and if you’re Ryan, you have to ask yourself how you want to be viewed when you step before the cameras during that first showdown over President Clinton’s agenda next year.

Do you want to be the guy who preserved unity at all costs, even though you had to swallow your convictions? Or do you want to be the guy who decided, when it wasn’t an easy thing to do, that American and personal values came before party discipline?

There’s little question in my mind about where Ryan’s heart is. As this long, bizarre summer draws to a close, political instinct ought to be telling him the same thing.

Ben Reilly wrote:GOP still faces two untenable choices, though. Either they reject Trump and lose roughly a third of their base, or they lean into the Trump movement and continue to alienate the American mainstream.

Ben R wrote:It's hard to imagine any success for the Republican Party in the near term. Maybe 15, 20 years from now -- but if I were to predict what will be happening then, generational changes will likely either have killed the GOP off or forced it to turn into a party today's 60-something Republicans would be appalled by.

Trump Goes Back To Original Immigration Position With Second 180 Flip

He now promises immediate action on deportation, with no mention of a path to legal status.

08/27/2016 07:53 pm ET | Updated 12 hours ago
S.V. Date  Senior Political Correspondent, The Huffington Post
DES MOINES, Iowa – Donald Trump’s experiment with “softening” his immigration policy came to a dramatic end Saturday in a fairgrounds livestock pavilion, with the Republican presidential nominee promising deportations within an hour of his inauguration.
“We are going to rid of the criminals, and it’s going to happen within one hour after I take office,” he said. “We will move justly, but we will move fast. Believe me.”
Trump has made the forcible deportation of the 11 million people in the country without documentation a cornerstone of his presidential campaign from its start last year. It made him a favorite among a segment of the Republican base, and helped him win the nomination over a dozen Republican senators and governors.
Then, last week, Trump explained in an appearance on Fox News that “thousands and thousands” of people he had met with on the issue had urged him not to deport undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for years and have no criminal record, but rather stable jobs and families. That new tack brought an immediate backlash from some of his hardcore supporters – including author Ann Coulter – for breaking his promise, as well as “I told you so” claims from mainstream GOP critics who had long predicted his eventual flip.
Trump backtracked on his new position later in the week – including in a CNN interview, where he claimed the modification was not a “softening” but actually “a hardening.” The Saturday remarks appear to complete the process, with Trump suggesting that undocumented immigrants commit a significant percentage of the country’s crimes and making zero mention of finding some way for those who have not committed any crimes to stay.
He also asserted – without any supporting evidence – that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would, if she were to win, end “all routine immigration enforcement.”
“In other words, totally open borders. Which will lead to a massive crime wave,” Trump said.


Carlo Allegri / Reuters
Trump said that if elected, he would “begin swiftly removing” the “hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal immigrants” who are in the country.

“I think he was trying to make up for his missteps,” said Brian Zegers, a 48-year-old personnel consultant who attended the biker-themed event in a leather vest and bandana. Smiling, Zegers attributed Trump’s original reversal to the advice of consultants and said the reversal of the reversal was just what the boisterous crowd of Trump supporters wanted to hear.
Other, more committed Trump fans said his shifts in position were of no concern to them. “The message will get tightened up before the election,” said Jim De Kruif, 57 an investment adviser who has always assumed that Trump will modify his policies heading into the general election. “That’s what politicians do.”
Trump also continued his recent practice of pledging to work for African-Americans and Latinos in front of virtually all-white audiences. He spent about five minutes of his 50-minute speech promising lower taxes for family farms and offering a commitment to the corn-based ethanol mandate in gasoline for his Iowa audience, and then spent twice as long telling members of the two ethnic minorities that the Democratic Party had not helped them and that they should support Trump. “What do you have to lose?” he asked, repeating a new favorite line.
Saturday’s event was organized by Iowa’s freshman Sen. Joni Ernst, the second of what she is hopes will become an annual ritual: a motorcycle rally raising money for a veterans’ charity, followed by a GOP pep rally.
Trump, though, did not participate in the motorcycle ride from the local Harley Davidson dealership to the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Instead, as is his preference, he flew in specifically for the event aboard his personal airliner, delivering the final speech of the afternoon to the crowd of about 2,000.
Ernst and other Iowa elected officials preceded Trump on stage. While urging voters to support Trump, the leaders spent little time praising their presidential nominee, and mainly pointed out the importance of keeping Supreme Court nominations out of Clinton’s hands.
Even that approach, though, could not entirely insulate the hometown Republicans from the danger of such a volatile candidate at the top of their ticket. At a news conference to explain the benefits of the ride for a veteran’s charity, Ernst was confronted with a question about one of the latest controversies for Trump’s campaign: reports of CEO Steve Bannon’s domestic violence charge from his first marriage.
Ernst pointed out that it was not her job to vet Trump’s staff. “I am not making the hiring decisions,” she said, but then quickly added: “Sexual assault and domestic violence is never OK – is never OK."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-immigration-flip-iowa_us_57c21d25e4b085c1ff29b41f?vv6mlwvhtjqkhuxr

Original Quill wrote:I found this article this AM on Yahoo.

As I wrote last night, Trump is gathering family and friends round his bed in the Hospice, for the last rites.