By David Harsanyi
Friday, January 29, 2016
There are many potential outcomes to a Donald Trump GOP
nomination. And every one of them is a disaster for conservatives.
The fact is, Trump fans will not be placated — not if
they lose, and definitely not if they win. Unless unforeseen events alter the
dynamics of American politics, it’s difficult to imagine conventional
Republicans and Trump fans inhabiting the same space after this is all done.
Me? I look forward to loathing three major political parties.
Now, if Trump prevails in the primaries, principled
small-government conservatives (however many are left) will be faced with a
distasteful choice: They can either back the nominee, picked fairly by the
rank-and-file of the party, or they can disregard party politics and actively
try and sink him.
If they support Trump? A disaster. Those who decide to
endorse Trump because of partisan loyalty will also be supporting a 45 percent
tariff on Chinese goods, policies barring immigrants based purely on religion,
and whatever other half-baked policy ideas spring from Trump’s mind. And they
should be really comfortable with Trumpism (and, with that, his many liberal
positions) because they’ll be spending the rest of their careers justifying the
support. For those who think they can embrace neutrality to escape this fight,
their silence will be treated as tacit endorsement by liberals and treachery by
Trump’s fans. It’s conceivable that a number of local races will suffer in
these intraparty skirmishes, hurting conservatives in state races and probably
Congress.
If they fight Trump? A disaster. For those who decide to
actively oppose Trump — and you assume many factions on the right would — the
prospects are not much better. There’s no modern precedent for a party’s
establishment undercutting its nominee, so it’s improbable the Republican party
would participate in torpedoing Trump. The time for that has passed. (One day,
perhaps, Reince Priebus will explain how he let a populist liberal reality-show
host win a major party’s nomination.)
More distressing, at least for some of us, is the
prospect that Trump’s outlook will turn out to be more popular than anyone
imagines. Maybe a flood of candidates will begin aping his populism and
succeed. Maybe Trump begins to transform American discourse into something more
closely resembling European politics, where nationalists and socialists argue
about who should run the state apparatus.
Many conservatives will undoubtedly toy with the idea of
running a third-party candidate (not as easy as it sounds, when you consider
the logistics and the factional nature of Republicans today), which would be
likely only to spoil the GOP nominee’s prospects and challenge his risible
claim to conservatism.
The important question for conservatives is: Would they
rather have a Republican president with views antithetical to their own, or
Hillary Clinton as president? Would they rather have a Republican who might
cause irreparable damage to their brand, or Bernie Sanders? Would they want a
GOP monopoly in D.C., led by Trump, or continue with gridlock as the purer
opposition party? We can imagine, though, that helping put Clinton (or Sanders)
in the White House would blow up any hope of a healthy right-of-center
consensus for many years to come.
If Trump loses? A disaster. If conservative intellectuals
and many of their institutions and leaders fail to back the nominee, Trump’s
fans will hold those elites culpable for the loss, further feeding the
frustrations that had alienated them in the first place. The idea that a bunch
of know-it-alls can undermine the democratic process will only generate more
anger and paranoia. Do Trump boosters seem like the sort of group that will
embrace rapprochement and constructive change after having an election stolen
from them?
Even more terrifying for many of us is the prospect of a
successful Trump presidency. Even without Congress, as Obama has shown, a
president can accomplish many destructive things — though probably not enough
to satisfy Trump’s supporters, who will undoubtedly be disappointed. Presidents
can’t just slap huge tariffs on other countries without Congress, and they
can’t make Mexico pay for border fences, nor take oil from countries in the
Middle East, nor deport 13 million immigrants here illegally. When this becomes
evident, I suspect his fans will still blame the establishment for its lack of
willpower, support, and patriotism.
And, of course, finally, Trump might lose the GOP
nomination (I still don’t believe he’ll win, but I’m cognizant of the fact that
this is probably wishful thinking). Then, it’s likely that the Republican party
will go back to business as usual. Which is a disaster of a whole different
kind.
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