I’m trying hard not to sound snooty about Donald Trump’s course and progress toward the GOP’s nomination this summer, but it is a difficult job. How is it possible that working people with money worries think the billionaire Trump has their best interests at heart? How it is conceivable that evangelical Christians imagine the thrice-divorced champion of Two Corinthians is a reliable defender of Faith and Family? Maybe the answer is that they don’t; they’re using Trump to send a message to the GOP’s governing masters that the party is over.
What that message may mean is that the core governing philosophies of the Republican Party – smaller government, free-trade, deregulation, social conservatism, and an aggressive foreign policy – no longer resonate with the base, whoever they may be. Republicans used to be the gilded rich and Methodists who owned hardware stores; today it is southern heritage enthusiasts, anti-abortion crusaders, and anybody with a stone in his shoe. The base’s composition has changed, but the party, not so much.
It is also possible, I suppose, that the base still believes in those core-governing philosophies, but doesn’t believe that their masters want to deliver on them. Decades of Republican yodeling about the evils of abortion, deficits, and the war on Christmas have come to naught, but through it all, the party’s leaders have lived long and prospered. Trump’s ascendancy may be the first occasion they’ve heard the base speak; now their dilemma is how to manage the intellectual and moral squalor of the upcoming nomination and general election.
Their first priority may be to rehabilitate the Maximum Leader and try coaxing him into behaving less like Ted Nugent, and more like anyone except Ted Cruz. Maybe Trump can become a viable candidate. Their other option is to engineer a brokered convention, the first since 1976, and hope that old fashioned arm twisting, deal making, and photographs of indiscreet encounters, turn up enough votes to nominate Kasich, Rubio or, heavens to Murgatroyd, Jeb Bush. Bush, after all, spent nearly $6,500 for every primary vote he received. I’m sure his supporters would like to see something in return.