<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Estrich: Trump makes trouble for fellow GOP candidates

By
Published:

What’s wrong with the way we pick our presidents?

The answer has got to be: plenty.

John Kasich, governor of Ohio (a role that, among other things, makes him a “real” candidate), last week became the 16th candidate vying for one of 10 spots in the upcoming GOP debate. This is a competition in which Donald Trump — the man who currently symbolizes everything that’s wrong with the process — is running first.

I mean, can you picture them up there? Maybe they could all be in boxes like the old “Hollywood Squares,” and you could give them buzzers and they could give 10-second answers to questions.

Or we could have a contest and see how many viewers could match the candidate with his name at the end of the debate. Sounds easy, but a lot of these guys look and sound a whole lot alike. Perhaps we could have bingo cards!

If ever there were proof that polls are ridiculous, foolish, meaningless measures of name recognition and nothing more, it’s in the current ones showing Donald Trump to be the leading Republican candidate for president.

Playing with fire

Is Donald Trump really the man more Republicans want to be president than anyone else? You can’t convince me. As a candidate, he has inspired anger and resentment in seemingly everyone, calling Mexicans “rapists,” then attacking war heroes, then giving out Lindsey Graham’s cell hone number. I’d love to dismiss it as just a childish prank or a play for ratings, but, in truth, it’s scarier than that.

This is fire he is playing with, and the people who are playing with him seem more drawn by the fire than the specifics. Underlying this Republican primary contest, it seems very clear, is a level of unrest in the party.

This is not the Tea Party talking. Yes, there are, no doubt, tea drinkers among the Trump numbers, but there are far more articulate advocates of the Tea Party agenda than Trump.

Trump doesn’t listen to anyone, anyway. He is an actor who can play only himself — writ large, of course. Because that is what he is, he takes no responsibility for what he says, and therefore does not pay a political price. Imagine anyone who actually had a chance of being president saying that Mexicans are rapists, not to mention attacking prisoners of war who fought in Vietnam (incidentally, Trump conveniently escaped service on a college deferment).

And here is the danger. There is no Republican out there who seems capable of taking him down without a fight. The “grown-ups,” as we used to call them, the James Baker types, the classy, smart, savvy, Republicans, who knew how to elect Presidents (and run administrations) — they don’t run things the way they used to, and they can’t.

There is, quite literally, no one in charge, no one to persuade at least some of the 16 candidates to wait four years, no one who can derail the coming confrontations with Trump and the games he will play (he is a professional at television, not politics — and this is television). Serious candidates will have to figure out, in the brief time slots they get during a debate, how to deal with Trump now without hurting themselves later.

This has nothing to do with picking the best person (however you choose to define that) to lead the Republicans in the fall. Right now, the crucial matter is how much damage that ultimate nominee suffers during a pre-nomination process that has been hijacked by a TV host who is ready to start firing people, and firing them up, even at the cost of burning those around him who are the rightful participants in what is ultimately not a game at all.

Loading...