By Jeremy Carl
Thursday, April 07, 2016
In an insightful recent column on the GOP primaries, the Washington Post’s Chris Cilliza accused
much of the GOP establishment of engaging in “magical realism” as they searched
for a non-Trump non-Cruz nominee whom GOP voters would view as legitimate.
Despite Ted Cruz’s overwhelming win in Wisconsin on
Tuesday, it continues to be clear that one of the only things uniting much of
the GOP establishment Dorothys in their Wizard of Oz fantasy world is their
shared belief that they can simply go to the convention floor, close their
eyes, click their fabulous ruby-red slippers together and say, “There’s no
place like home” and then a candidate will magically appear to replace Trump or
Cruz as the GOP nominee. These “leaders” need to leave their electoral
fantasyland and stop plotting a coup against the vast majority of their own
voters.
While Trump would be a disastrous GOP nominee (something
I don’t believe will happen due to Cruz’s superior organization and momentum),
there is something worse than a Trump nomination, and that is a coup by D.C.
insiders to install one of their own as the nominee, flatly defying the wishes
of the overwhelming majority of the GOP electorate. When push comes to shove, I
am not #NeverTrump – I am #NeverCoup.
Unfortunately, given the reluctance of many in the
establishment to endorse a Cruz alternative to Trump (Full disclosure: Like the
National Review editors, I have
endorsed Cruz in the GOP race, and I believe he would be an excellent nominee)
it appears that many GOP insiders are still engaging in magical realism,
whether it’s Karl Rove’s call for a “fresh face” or John Boehner’s recent plug
for Paul Ryan, switching the allegiance he recently gave his fellow Ohioan, the
delusional Trump tool John Kasich, who, as the campaign goes on, looks like a
man more in need of an intervention than a nomination.
In retort to these dithering Dorothy’s of do-nothingism
in the GOP establishment, Cilizza gets to the heart of the matter: “In an
election wholly defined by the Republican base’s dislike and distrust for the
party’s leaders, how can you realistically expect that same base to capitulate
to an establishment-favorite candidate who may have not even competed in the
primary and caucus process?” The simple answer: You can’t.
It is not clear who the establishment’s magical realists
have in mind as a candidate – Paul Ryan’s name gets thrown about quite a lot
and Scott Walker (who, to his credit endorsed Cruz and campaigned on his
behalf) is also getting increasing mentions, but even if this were somehow
practically possible (and given the dominance of Cruz and Trump supporters
among convention delegates that seems very unlikely) it would be politically
and ethically disastrous.
I believe a Trump nomination could lead to the
obliteration of the GOP in the fall. I’d urge GOP voters and leaders in the
strongest possible terms to select Cruz instead. But a nominee other than Trump
or Cruz would be something worse. It would mean the GOP would deserve to be obliterated, having become
nothing more than an insiders’ clique that will stop at nothing to flout the
will of its voters in order to monopolize power for itself. It would suggest
that the GOP is beyond reform and that the establishment has so rigged the game
that the entire process of having a GOP primary season is useless. We’d be
better off simply polling the GOP’s major donors, political consultants, and
lobbyists, and having them pick our nominee without bothering with the charade
of a popular vote.
Let’s be direct: There is no possible situation in which
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, for whom a war upon the party establishment was
their defining feature, can combine to take 70 percent of GOP votes only to
have that same party establishment whom its voters have overwhelmingly rejected
choose the GOP’s nominee. The GOP has not had a brokered convention won by a
non-leading candidate in the modern political era. More important, there is no
plausible candidate who represents a “compromise” between Cruz and Trump who
could be embraced by the establishment and grassroots. This isn’t a question of
a party split between supporters of a conservative candidate and those of a
moderate candidate ultimately compromising on a moderately conservative
candidate. What the establishment coup plotters demand is that we “compromise”
between our two dominant candidates who were defined primarily by their
hostility to the Washington cartel by selecting as our nominee someone blessed
by it.
For those Republicans who find either Trump or Cruz politically
unacceptable, they do have a choice. They can either not vote, write in a
candidate, or run an independent third-party candidate and support that
candidate, without insulting us by implying that they do so with the imprimatur
of the Republican party or its voters. Faced with Trump as the nominee, such an
approach might well be justified, given the unique damage he could inflict on
the cause of conservatism. If Cruz is the nominee, I believe such tactics would
backfire disastrously. But it would at least be intellectually honest and fair
to the process as a whole. The establishment dissidents could play the
third-party John Anderson role to Cruz’s Ronald Reagan. But they should
remember what happened to the GOP’s John Anderson faction in the 1980 election
and afterwards.
Sorry, GOP establishment, it’s not us, it’s you. After
six years of relentlessly stonewalling a tea party and grassroots movement that
handed you victory after victory, the consequences of your intransigence have
become clear. Despite all of the super PAC money and a campaign structure that
favored them, insiders were absolutely crushed by Trump, Cruz, and the other
outsider candidates. So while I think that Trump would be a disastrous nominee
for the GOP, my ultimate bottom line as a conservative is not #NeverTrump but
#NeverCoup. The most obvious way to avoid this entire conundrum would be for
the establishment to do what it should have done at least a month ago, and
unite around Cruz as a Trump alternative. This is finally happening to some
degree, but far too many are sitting on the sidelines.
The GOP establishment plotters, who doubtless pride
themselves on their lack of sentimentalism and willingness to use any means to
achieve their ends, need to go back and study Talleyrand, the great 18th- and
19th-century French diplomat whose name is synonymous with amoral and ruthless
— but often successful — realpolitik.
Commenting on Napoleon’s decision to kidnap and execute someone he felt was a
threat to his throne, Talleyrand claimed that Napoleon’s action was “worse than
a crime, it was a blunder.” In attempting to stage a coup against their own
voters by rejecting their choice of Trump or Cruz as the GOP nominee, the
establishment plotters are probably aware at some level that they are committing
a political crime. But what they do not seem to know, and what is far worse, is
that they are committing a blunder.
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