I had planned to write a post today on the op-ed from Jerry Falwell Jr. concerning Trump’s Churchillian leadership qualities, and I will do so tomorrow, but I was visited by a wave of nostalgia and regret as I thought about what candidates the GOP could have nominated and why they didn’t do so.
The situation in which we find ourselves, with neither party offering up a reasonable candidate, could have been avoided. Just so you know, my dream candidate was Jeb Bush. (I’m sure he’ll sleep better tonight knowing this.) He’s articulate, seasoned, and moderate, with a long record of successful governance. He aligns with the Republican platform on abortion. I would have been proud to vote for him, and if he had been nominated I think the election would have been a real horse race. But alas, even though the RNC poured millions into his primary run, he couldn’t get anywhere. There’s just too much baggage associated with having the last name of Bush. (One might ask why there wasn’t just as much baggage associated with being a Clinton, but hey! This is only the second Clinton.)
So my second choice was Marco Rubio, and I do think he’s going to get back in the ring at some point. He needs to gain a little gravitas and gray hair, so this may take awhile. I like John Kasich, although he showed some real lack of strategy by coming to the primary race too late and staying too long, thus possibly helping Trump win the nomination. And I said earlier that I’d hold my nose and vote for Ted Cruz if he was nominated, even with his shenanigans on the Senate floor during that absurd all-hat-and-no-cattle 2013 government shutdown over Obamacare and even with his statement that there should be extra police patrols in “Muslin neighborhoods,” whatever those might be, and even though . . . he was born in a foreign country to an American mother and a foreign national father.
Okay. Enough of that. My husband gets very impatient with “if only” and “we should have,” and he’s right about that. But I would like to speculate here a little bit on what could have been done to avert the Trump Train. After all, as has been reported pretty credibly, Trump never actually expected or indeed wanted to win the nomination. His initial campaign was promulgated on the idea that he might get 20 percent of the vote and would show up as a legitimate protest candidate. So what happened? Well, I think human pride and selfishness can be blamed. We had this ridiculous field of 17 candidates, and of course the loudest and brashest voice was going to be heard the best. There needed to be some real statesmanship shown, both with the individual candidates and with the RNC administration. Reince Priebus didn’t have the authority as chairman to force anyone to drop out, but surely there could have been some back-channel talks with him telling the stalwart sixteen that they needed to act like grownups and decide who was most electable, with everyone else getting behind that choice. I have no idea of this was even tried. But wouldn’t it have been just, like, so great if that had happened? If Trump had been stopped in his tracks by a show of party unity and individual maturity?
But it didn’t happen. And now here we are, on the eve of Labor Day, traditionally seen at the “real” start of the campaign. We’re stuck with what we have, and it’s a terrible choice to have to make. I don’t think it’s legitimate to throw away one’s vote on a third-party or write-in candidate (although I have to laugh at Jonah Goldberg over at National Review who says that his fear of spontaneously bursting into flame keeps him from pulling the lever for Clinton). I’ll close with a quote from Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal who pretty much sums up my position on Trump:
It’s important that Donald Trump and what he represents, this kind of ethnic quote “conservatism” or populism, be so decisively rebuked that the Republican Party and Republican voters will forever learn their lesson that they cannot nominate a man so manifestly unqualified to be president in any way, shape, or form.