Politico
By Jonathan Topaz and Daniel Strauss
June 26, 2015
All jokes aside, the Republican Party is officially afraid of Donald Trump.
He
has virtually zero chance of winning the presidential nomination. But
insiders worry that the loud-mouthed mogul is more than just a minor
comedic nuisance on cable
news; they fret that he’s a loose cannon whose rants about Mexicans and
scorched-earth attacks on his rivals will damage the eventual nominee
and hurt a party struggling to connect with women and minorities and
desperate to win.
“Donald
Trump is like watching a road-side accident,” said former George W.
Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. “Everybody pulls over to see the
mess. And Trump thinks
that’s entertainment. But running for president is serious. And the
risk for the party is he tarnishes everybody.”
Those
risks were amplified this week after a trio of polls showed him likely
to earn a coveted invitation to the party’s debates, which ironically
were restructured with
the very goal of avoiding the circus-like atmosphere of 2012. Having
Trump introduce the 2016 field to a national audience was not exactly
the Big Tent the party’s bigwigs had in mind.
“I’m
not excited about somebody as divisive as Trump or somebody as
obnoxious as Trump being on the debate stage,” one RNC member confessed.
Trump
currently sits in eighth place among Republicans, according to the Real
Clear Politics average of national polls — ahead of New Jersey Gov.
Chris Christie and former
Texas Gov. Rick Perry. And this week, he came in second in two New
Hampshire polls and in a Fox News national poll, finishing behind only
former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in all three.
Under
the rules instituted by Fox News, the top 10 candidates by national
polling average will be included in the first debate, to be held in
August. Trump’s star could
easily fade by then. But as of now, he would be in — over 2012
Republican runner-up Rick Santorum, who won 11 states and around 4
million votes last cycle; over Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the popular
governor of a key swing state; over South Carolina Sen. Lindsey
Graham, a leading foreign policy voice in the field; and over Louisiana
Gov. Bobby Jindal, known as a policy wonk.
He’d
also make it in over Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who the
party establishment desperately wants on the debate stage. Fiorina has
earned strong reviews
from early-state activists, and party insiders say her inclusion in the
debate is critical — both to demonstrate the GOP’s diversity and to
help male candidates find the right tone in connecting with female
voters, whom Republicans have struggled to win over
in recent years.
“If
Donald Trump elbows out Carly Fiorina, for example, that would be a
real tragedy for our side,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.
Beyond
that, there are concerns about what he’ll do once he’s on the stage —
namely, go hard after the other Republican hopefuls and say incendiary
things that will hurt
the party.
In
recent months, he’s said that Fiorina got “fired viciously” from HP and
“got clobbered” in her 2010 California Senate loss to Barbara Boxer
(she lost by 10 points.)
He’s ripped Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as “very weak” on immigration.
He’s called Jeb Bush “an unhappy person” and said he “couldn’t negotiate
his way out of a paper bag.”
Asked
whether Trump will keep up the attacks, campaign manager Corey
Lewandowski said he would. “They should be worried about Donald Trump,”
Lewandowski said of the party
establishment, before criticizing Rubio and Bush on several issues.
And worried they are.
“There
is a real concern, particularly on the debate stage, that Trump won’t
play by the rules and he’s going to throw some below-the-belt punches,”
said Republican strategist
Ford O’Connell.
“Republicans
in a primary don’t like to see the candidates attacking each other,”
said Peter Feaman, an RNC National Committeeman from Florida. “They’d
like to see the
focus stay where it should be, and that’s the leadership of the
Democratic Party for the last eight years.”
“The
challenge with somebody like him is that when you’re running in these
races, there’s sort of an assumption that you’re racing with
professionals,” said Katie Packer
Gage, a former deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney. “He makes up
facts. It’s a challenge because he’s very unpredictable.”
And
above all the RNC — whose self-assessment of the party’s failure in
2012 urged the importance of appealing to non-white voters, especially
Hispanics, 71 percent of
whom voted for President Barack Obama — is nervous about Trump’s
rhetoric. He accused Mexican immigrants of being rapists and smuggling
drugs in his announcement speech, and said at a January Republican
cattle call in Iowa that half the undocumented immigrants
in the U.S. are criminals. In 2011, he led the racially loaded calls
for Obama to release his long-form birth certificate and, in April,
blamed the president for the riots in Baltimore following the death of
Freddie Gray.
Fleischer,
one of the five co-authors of the RNC autopsy report, said Trump
largely embodied all of the party’s problems with non-white voters.
“When he says something
irresponsible like getting Mexicans to pay for a wall, he will alienate
Hispanics … he’s irresponsible, he’s divisive, he’s hurtful,” he said.
Asked
about those concerns, Lewandowski responded: “Who’s saying this, old
white guys? You’re saying you’ve got old white guys saying they’re
concerned about Donald Trump’s
messaging about illegal immigrants coming across our southern border.
Wow, that speaks for itself.”
Several
Iowa Republicans expressed dismay at Trump’s momentum, labeling him as
someone whose brash personality and celebrity status make him a bad fit
for the rural first
nominating state.
“Most
of the rank-and-file Republicans think, ‘What have we done to let a guy
like Donald Trump on the debate stage?’” said one Iowa Republican
activist with ties to the
party. “When I saw the New Hampshire poll, I was like, ‘Oh my god.’”
“He’s
just not Iowa nice,” the person added — relaying several stories about
Trump’s recent trips to the Hawkeye State. At two events, the person
said, Trump insisted
on speaking earlier than scheduled so that he could get back to his
home in New York City: “It was kind of embarrassing. He left before our
donors showed up.” (Lewandowski said he hadn’t seen that at any events
in Iowa and touted Trump’s large crowds in the
state.)
Party
insiders acknowledge that there’s a sliver of voters — those fed up
altogether with the political system — who are drawn to Trump. “I love
him,” said Jeanne Sangenario,
who was on Romney’s New Hampshire women’s leadership team in 2008 and
now serves as Seacoast Republican Women director. “Because I know he
would take no baloney from anybody from any world leader and he would
get things done and the economy would come back
big time, he would get it done. No two ways about it.”
Other
Republicans say voters will drown him out — particularly in a more
formal debate setting where viewers expect a serious discussion.
“I
do remember growing up in Kermit [Texas], every time the carnival came
to town it always drew a big crowd,” said Republican consultant John
Weaver, who worked on Arizona
Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and has signed up to work
with Kasich. “But nobody wanted the carnival barker to be mayor.”
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