Trump card divides Republican party

Donald Trump is ploughing millions of his own dollars into his campaign, but his party is still unsure whether he’s the ace — or the joker — in the pack, writes Bette Browne

IT’S the Donald Dilemma—the biggest problem now facing Republicans in the US presidential election.

Party leaders used to think they only had to battle against the leading Democrat, Hillary Clinton, to win the White House but that was before Donald Trump came along.

Now they have a two-pronged battle on their hands and while they can have all guns blazing against Clinton, a misstep against Trump could cost them. The Donald Dilemma is this: ruin the Republican party now by not going after him, or ruin the party later by going after him.

If Republicans don’t stand up to Trump now or stand up to him too late, polls show he could doom the party’s White House chances.

"@gqforbes: TRUMP ON JOBS. pls rt http://t.co/gupiYMQNA2 @realDonaldTrump http://t.co/e7CWiHj95r"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2015

And if they do stand up to him he could jump ship in a fit of pique and split the party’s vote by running as an Independent candidate, thus handing the presidency to a Democrat.

That’s what happened the last time a major Republican-leaning Independent ran. That was back in the 1992 election when Texas businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent and split the Republican vote, catapulting Bill Clinton into office and costing George Bush Snr the election. If it happens again, it could cost another Bush the White House.

As recently as July 23, Trump himself raised the issue, telling The Hill newspaper he would “absolutely” launch a third-party candidacy if Republicans were “not fair”.

Meanwhile, he has put a particularly ugly spanner in the works for Republican leaders. They had been urging candidates to play nice with Hispanics, whose support will be needed in the election. But then along came Trump who started dissing Hispanics from day one with venomous attacks, though he recently sought to soften his rhetoric on a visit to the US-Mexican border.

When he announced his candidacy on June 16 he called Mexican immigrants “criminals” and “rapists” and later spoke about building a wall to keep them out. There was some finger wagging from some of the other 15 Republican candidates but none manned up to Trump.

Any one of them could have stepped forward and seized control of the race and restored the soul of their party. But they chose to let the moment pass.

So the denunciations were timid and slow. Even Jeb Bush, whose wife is Mexican, took two weeks to come up with a forceful response, calling the remarks “extraordinary ugly”. What had stopped them — fear of the ‘Perot factor’, fear of the polls surging behind Trump? Or perhaps they instinctively knew that there are more votes to be had in attacking, rather than in defending, Mexican immigrants.

Always great to speak with Veterans - our nation's heroes. We will Make America Great Again! pic.twitter.com/P58AGMmBwY

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2015

But they also knew that there are few votes to be had in attacking white heroes who fight America’s wars.

So when Trump took aim at the heroism of Vietnam war veteran Senator John McCain, who’d earlier dared called Trump’s supporters “crazies”, most of the candidates rushed past themselves to try to bring the developer down. He was unfit to be America’s commander in chief, they thundered. He’d disqualified himself. He should withdraw from the race.

But it looks like they may have waited too long. In trying to walk a fine line between not upsetting Trump and not encouraging him, they may have ended up creating their own monster and given him just enough oxygen to do major damage to the party.

Polls that came out two days after his remarks about McCain, but conducted mainly before he made them, showed Trump’s support surging to 24% of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, putting him 12 points ahead of Jeb Bush. So, even if he suffers a setback in later polls, he is now so far ahead that it may not matter that much.

The thinking in Washington is that eventually he is likely to implode, given that he is bereft of political experience or substantive policy platforms and doesn’t like being challenged about his views. But that could be a while in coming.

And while it might be easy to dismiss him as a demagogue, Trump didn’t come out of nowhere. The political ground in America has been well prepared for such a candidate to emerge. In fact, Trump helped to prepare the ground himself. He was a champion of the ‘birther’ brigade, led by Tea Party luminaries, who suggested Barack Obama was a foreigner so shouldn’t be president.

Civility was out the door. Intolerance and thinly veiled racism became the new ‘politics’.

The malaise that is blighting the Republican Party and being exploited by the likes of Trump and the Tea Party has been years in the making.

"@EdwardFrancisII: "Can't Be Bought" @realDonaldTrump - #2016election http://t.co/3JmAo2Y94S"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2015

When I arrived in America two decades ago there was a battle brewing for the future of the Republican Party and while moderates fought hard they lost that battle. People like then New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman had seen what was happening and as far back as 2005. In her book It’s My Party, Too: Taking Back the Republican Party, she criticised the “divisive strategy” of the party. But there was little room for people like her in the party as neo-conservatives like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld dominated the administration of George W Bush, leaving the party ripe for the taking by the Tea Party.

Then there is the corrosive issue of hard cash — the millionaire factor, or in Trump’s case the billionaire factor, that is infecting both parties, especially since a Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that struck down limits on campaign funding, a ruling that led to the creation of Super PACs (Political Action Committees).

Traditional PACs can raise money up to a ceiling of $5,400 per donor but Super PACs, which are not directly linked to the candidate, can accept donations of any size. Today, no matter which party a candidate belongs to, they won’t get very far in seeking the nomination unless they can dazzle their party with fundraising figures and prove they can last the course.

Jeb Bush’s fundraising tally so far of $119m, for example, includes $103m raised by his Super PAC. Hillary Clinton has reported $69m in fundraising, a total second only to Bush. But unlike Bush, less than half of her money came through her Super PAC.

"@PJTV: ON TOP The GOP, Democrats and media have all hit @realDonaldTrump Here’s the result: http://t.co/e6APNLGNGS pic.twitter.com/OrEpbtXh3H"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 21, 2015

And that’s the deeper problem: a small number of mega-wealthy donors can now effectively become political kingmakers, freely pushing their issues in the halls of Congress.

It’s hardly surprising that this creeping sense of oligarchy is turning off voters, who tend to feel powerless by comparison.

Indeed, Donald Trump’s supporters say they are drawn to him because he’s using his own $10bn nest egg to fund his campaign and so, they suggest, will not be beholden to wealthy donors. “The candidates, most of them say stuff so they can get donations,” Ray Bittner, a Vietnam war veteran from Idaho, told Reuters. “He [Trump] has a backbone, where many of our politicians do not,” said retiree Diane Rose from Louisiana.

So the problem for the Republican Party and for the country as a whole goes beyond Trump. But now it may be too late to put him and the system that spawned him back in the box.