If Robert Costa is to be believed, and he’s always seemed to be reasonably well-connected to the Republicans, the elites and the big-money boys among them are getting more and more concerned that their party will nominate a clown like Trump or Carson and thus give the Presidency to Hillary. Even more concerning, a candidate of that sort might drag the rest of the party down with him.
In normal times, the way forward would be obvious. The wannabes would launch concerted campaigns, including television attack ads, against the front-runners. But even if the other candidates had a sense of what might work this year, it is unclear whether it would ultimately accrue to their benefit. Trump’s counterpunches have been withering, while Carson’s appeal to the base is spiritual, not merely political. If someone was able to do significant damage to them, there’s no telling to whom their supporters would turn, if anyone.
I found this interesting, because it’s the first non-partisan thing I’ve heard from that side which expresses the same worry I have:
“We’re potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn’t fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job,” this strategist said. “It’s not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?”
Yes indeed. Can you imagine a President Trump, who makes loose cannons look like gun emplacements in Fort Bliss? Or a President Carson, who not only believes six impossible things before breakfast like the White Queen but brushes off dissent as political correctness?
As Charlie Pierce says, the Republican party has been afflicted by an obvious prion disease since it first ate all the monkey-brains in the mid-1970’s, but this Presidential campaign is really scary. Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, herself a beneficiary of the Tea Party madness, explains what’s going on:
“You have a lot of people who were told that if we got a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate, then life was gonna be great,” she said in an interview Thursday. “What you’re seeing is that people are angry. Where’s the change? Why aren’t there bills on the president’s desk every day for him to veto? They’re saying, ‘Look, what you said would happen didn’t happen, so we’re going to go with anyone who hasn’t been elected.’?”
Whether that’s a rational thing to do or not, it does seem to be the way a large portion of the supposedly-sophisticated American electorate is behaving so far in this campaign. It’s a good thing the election is still 51 weeks off.