The Republican Party is trying to stop Donald Trump from getting its nomination, but every effort so far has self-destructed. The other candidates are refusing to bow out to consolidate behind one contender. Public criticism of Trump seems to have started too late. Donors and political operatives are paralyzed. So reports the New York Times, with some relish.
Read the excerpt and follow the link. Then read my thoughts after the jump.
From Inside the Republican Party’s Desperate Mission to Stop Donald Trump – The New York Times:
The scenario Karl Rove outlined was bleak.
Addressing a luncheon of Republican governors and donors in Washington on Feb. 19, he warned that Donald J. Trump’s increasingly likely nomination would be catastrophic, dooming the party in November. But Mr. Rove, the master strategist of George W. Bush’s campaigns, insisted it was not too late for them to stop Mr. Trump, according to three people present.
At a meeting of Republican governors the next morning, Paul R. LePage of Maine called for action. Seated at a long boardroom table at the Willard Hotel, he erupted in frustration over the state of the 2016 race, saying Mr. Trump’s nomination would deeply wound the Republican Party. Mr. LePage urged the governors to draft an open letter “to the people,” disavowing Mr. Trump and his divisive brand of politics.
In public, there were calls for the party to unite behind a single candidate. In dozens of interviews, elected officials, political strategists and donors described a frantic, last-ditch campaign to block Mr. Trump — and the agonizing reasons that many of them have become convinced it will fail. Behind the scenes, a desperate mission to save the party sputtered and stalled at every turn.
Efforts to unite warring candidates behind one failed spectacularly: An overture from Senator Marco Rubio to Mr. Christie angered and insulted the governor. An unsubtle appeal from Mitt Romney to John Kasich, about the party’s need to consolidate behind one rival to Mr. Trump, fell on deaf ears.
At least two campaigns have drafted plans to overtake Mr. Trump in a brokered convention, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has laid out a plan that would have lawmakers break with Mr. Trump explicitly in a general election.
Despite all the forces arrayed against Mr. Trump, the interviews show, the party has been gripped by a nearly incapacitating leadership vacuum and a paralytic sense of indecision and despair, as he has won smashing victories in South Carolina and Nevada. Donors have dreaded the consequences of clashing with Mr. Trump directly. Elected officials have balked at attacking him out of concern that they might unintentionally fuel his populist revolt. And Republicans have lacked someone from outside the presidential race who could help set the terms of debate from afar.
[Keep reading. . .]
Now some Republican insiders have decided “if you can’t beat him, join him,” maneuvering to ally themselves with Trump. This includes not only Chris Christie but Maine governor Paul LePage, who was mentioned at the beginning of this article as initiating one of the efforts to stop him!
Seeing the party establishment tied up in knots like this may be hilarious for those whose contempt of the political status quo is a major reason for supporting Trump.
But that the G.O.P.’s “incapacitating leadership vacuum” is such that it can’t stop an attempt to hijack the party is pathetic, a sign of a larger political problem that will only get worse whether Trump gets elected or whether he goes down in flames.
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