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Liberal Opinion Week
March 2, 2016
Norman Leahy & Paul Goldman
Virginia For The Win: If Other States Had Followed Virginia’s Lead, The Republican Party Could Stop Trump Virginia for the Win is a series examining Virginia’s crucial role in the 2016 presidential race and national politics. “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” declared Abraham Lincoln before a standingroom-only SRO crowd at the 1858 Illinois Republican State Convention in Springfield. Lincoln discussed the growing divisions already responsible for the Whig Party’s collapse that now threatened to destroy the nation. His political advice, updated to reflect the current clash between the Republican Party’s brand of conservatism and Donald Trump’s personalitydriven presidential campaign, is still prescient today: “I don’t expect the Republican Party to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or the other.” The question now is what the Party of Lincoln will become: a house built on broad conservative principles, or one built around Donald Trump’s personality. At last weekend’s GOP debate, Trump made his strongest bid yet to see it becomes the latter. He blamed many of the nation’s woes on conservatism, going to far as to say former President George W. Bush had blood on his hands for failing to heed advice that would have stopped the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. On Monday, Bush traveled to South Carolina to bolster his younger brother Jeb’s campaign in the GOP primary. Trump warned “W” not to attack him. Bush never mentioned Trump’s name. Trumpism, the political thought of Donald J. Trump -- former liberal Democrat, turned liberal Republican, turned Reform Party presidential hopeful, turned center-left Democratic supporter of Hillary Clinton, turned independent potential presidential hopeful, turned self-styled conservative GOP White House aspirant -- isn’t a platform built on philosophic principles. It is a cult of personality. Conservatism believes substance matters. Trumpism believes substance is for losers. Conservatism appeals to individual hard work; Trumpism to collective anger. Conservatism has a long history; Trumpism has Trump for as long as he keeps winning. Trumpism’s populism mocks Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’s, IVermont, populism. Sanders is prepared lose in defense of long-held principle. The billionaire New Yorker only values winning, principles be damned. Trump’s rivals have long said the real estate mogul isn’t a conservative. But now, after his blood-soaked attacks on former president George W. Bush, and increasing support for certain policies long identified as Democratic, Trump’s opponent’s claim he isn’t even a Republiacan. Trump defines his politics this way: He intends
to be a winner in 2016, even if that means Republican will be losers.
Kirk wrote, “In the statesman, prudence is chief among virtues.” Trump’s “your momma” threats may have been acceptable in his former role as a Hall of Fame promoter for World Wresting Entertainment. But not as president. A Democratic victory over conservatism is a partisan triumph. But GOP primary voters choosing Trumpism over conservatism would be a philosophical watershed. George Bush went to South Carolina to save his brother’s wounded campaign. Jeb Bush, once heavily favored to win the nomination, is not going to win this year. It seems to us that Bush 43’s reluctance to directly defend conservatism from Trumpism shows the party of Lincoln may soon face its Whig moment. Trump is unsuited for the presidency. If conservatism is worth saving within the GOP, then the most recent conservative president has to say, “I will not dishonor the office by helping Trump win it.” If not, then Trump may leave conservatism’s carcass for the buzzards to pick over as his followers fill the hall in Cleveland this summer to hail their Republican Caesar.
This understandably panics the conservative GOP establishment. But it wouldn’t be so potent a threat had the Republican National Committee listened to the Republican Party of Virginia. The RPV adopted rules for its March 1 primary giving every candidate receiving at least 2 percent of the vote their proportional share of Virginia’s convention delegates. Thus, Trump’s 35 percent in New Hampshire would entitle him to only the same percentage of the commonwealth’s delegates to the Republican National Convention. However, many key upcoming GOP primaries allows a candidate who wins 35 percent of the vote to get up to 100 percent of a state’s delegates. While the national pundits claim Trumpism can be stopped as the primary schedule pivots to the more “moderate” states after Super Tuesday, this 35 percent reality suggests otherwise. Virginia’s approach would have saved conservatives. This salvation may be necessary, given the GOP debate last Saturday. Trump made clear his utter contempt for one of conservatism’s key governing principles: (c) 2016, The Washington Post prudence. As the conservative philosopher Russell 2-16-16
Francis Wilkinson
Imagine A Republican Party Under Trump
As this week’s slugfest between Donald Trump and the Pope confirms, the 2016 election is unlike others we have known. Trump may eventually lose to another candidate. Or he could end up with the most delegates and the Republican nomination for president. Which raises a basic question: What is the Republican Party if Trump is its nominee? The answer is not immediately obvious. Parties are amorphous and hard to define, but they are much more than the shadow cast by a presidential nominee. The Republican Party has traditions and factions, dispositions and interests, and it embodies and conveys an identifiable set of values. The gun lobby and conservative Christians are generally components of the party. Unions and environmentalists are generally not. And pretty much everyone gets that. If Trump gains the nomination, however, many Republican verities are up for grabs. Trump has proposed a sometimes fiercely protectionist agenda in a party known for free trade. He has converted to the more than three-decade-old party line opposing abortion, but countered its more recent demonization of Planned Parenthood. He has advanced a wholly new Republican aspiration -- government protection of the sort of jobs made vulnerable by globalization -- while at the same time endorsing most of the party’s habitual tax policies to further enrich those who benefit most
from globalization. “He has the potential to reshape the party around a new coalition,” said Republican consultant Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign, in an interview. A new coalition means a new set of interests, supporters and attitudes. Blue-collar concerns, protectionism and white nationalism would be ascendant; some Democrats, including some Bernie Sanders supporters, might answer Trump’s call. “Big companies, the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street would all take a big hit,” Schmidt said. On national security, the orthodox Republican narrative portrays the 21st century as a matrix of threats to which Democrats render us vulnerable, and from which only the Republican Party can keep the nation safe. Trump obliterated that narrative in a South Carolina debate last week, accusing President George W. Bush of being unprepared for alQaida’s 2001 attacks, and thus responsible both for the devastating result and his administration’s disastrous response -- invading Iraq. Trump repeated the claim at a CNN forum Thursday night, blaming Bush for destabilizing the Middle East, leading to the creation of Islamic State, while scaling back his charge that Bush had “lied” about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Wilkinson continued on page 11