{"id":4507,"date":"2016-05-13T07:54:49","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T13:54:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2016-05-13T08:05:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T14:05:45","slug":"why-the-trump-nomination-wont-tear-the-gop-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/05\/why-the-trump-nomination-wont-tear-the-gop-apart.html","title":{"rendered":"Why the Trump nomination won’t tear the GOP apart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ADonald_Trump_(8567813820)_(2).jpg;<\/p>\n

How often have you read that this election will end up destroying the Republican Party, as it splinters into two, and whatever its replacement is, will in short order become the new second major party and the Republican Party itself will ultimately be as buried in the past as the Whigs or the Federalists?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s nonsense.<\/p>\n

The primary complaint about Trump is not a matter of divisions in the party with respect to ideology. \u00a0This is not a matter of moderates vs. conservatives, nor of social conservatives vs. libertarian types. \u00a0Sure, there are matters of dispute (more on this later) but the primary motive for NeverTrumpism is not this.<\/p>\n

The primary complaint is a matter of character, e.g., in this National Review article<\/a>. \u00a0Donald Trump has crossed every line of how civilized people behave, with, for instance, his \u201cMuslim moratorium\u201d and accusations that Mexico sends rapists to the U.S. \u00a0He calls for executing family members of terrorists, and shows no regard for the fact that what he is proposing is a literal war crime. \u00a0He encourages violence at his rallies, or, at least, doesn\u2019t discourage it. \u00a0His business ventures are shady, especially Trump University. \u00a0And his policies, or lack thereof: \u00a0his lack of interest in serious study of policy issues and his approach of seemingly deciding his policy declarations based on what he thinks will be the most popular, are both fundamentally issues of character.<\/p>\n

What are the policy objections to Trump? \u00a0His true beliefs are so unknown that there isn\u2019t really an ideologically-based opposition \u2014 and many of the Republicans now rediscovering party unity seem to be taking the approach that Trump is, in the end, indifferent to actual policy decisions, so long as he has the title of \u201cpresident,\u201d and can therefore be controlled, and they\u2019ll be able to implement their agenda behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

If you take his statements at face value, then, yes, there\u2019s\u00a0this:<\/p>\n

Trump supports immigration restrictionism. \u00a0His opponents are \u201cChamber of Commerce Republicans\u201d who want de facto open borders to keep wages low and profits flowing to business.<\/p>\n

Trump supports trade restrictions and tarriffs. \u00a0His opponents are Big Business Republicans who want to keep benefitting from imports.<\/p>\n

Trump supports America First-ism and isolationism in foreign policy. \u00a0His opponents are chicken-hawk interventionists.<\/p>\n

Trump supports . . . well, what else? \u00a0And is there anything coherent and compelling in the contrary positions, in a way that would really pull people together?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t see it. \u00a0And a party-splintering can\u2019t consist of a small number of party \u201cestablishment\u201d and major donors declaring the split, without the rank-and-file. \u00a0Besides which, whether he really moves forward with any of these proposals is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

What happens next isn\u2019t at all clear. \u00a0Does Trump make-nice with as many elected officials as possible? \u00a0Does he pivot, \u201csay sorry\u201d for the line-crossing statements? \u00a0Or is his outrageousness simply too much of what he is, for him to shed it to try to appear \u201cpresidential\u201d? \u00a0And there are the two wild cards: \u00a0the Trump University lawsuits and, on the other hand, the investigation into Clinton\u2019s e-mail server.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s hard to see a third-party candidate capture the imagination of enough voters to make any difference, and without that, the status quo stays.<\/p>\n

Now, if the scenario were different, if there were, in fact, three candidates who split the vote more equally throughout the campaign season, and a contested convention with a bruising fight rather than compromises and deal-making, then we\u2019d be talking about a different story. \u00a0And hindsight (such as Megan McArdle\u2019s rather persuasive recent piece<\/a>) is 20\/20,\u00a0so perhaps the \u201cEstablishment\u201d will have learned that picking dynasties and supporting amnesty isn\u2019t a path forward \u2014 but then again, individuals who claimed the label of great strategists thought that amesty was exactly the right policy in their post-mortem after 2012, so whether they learn the right lessons this time, after the dust has cleared, is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image: \u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ADonald_Trump_(8567813820)_(2).jpg; By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Donald Trump) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How often have you read that this election will end up destroying the Republican Party, as it splinters into two, and whatever its replacement is, will in short order become the new second major party and the Republican Party itself will ultimately be as buried in the past as the Whigs or the Federalists? That\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":4514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[378,325],"class_list":["post-4507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-republican-party","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the Trump nomination won't tear the GOP apart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How often have you read that this election will end up destroying the Republican Party, as it splinters into two, and whatever its replacement is, will in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2016\/05\/why-the-trump-nomination-wont-tear-the-gop-apart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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