Washington Post
By Philip Rucker
July 1, 2015
For Democrats, Donald Trump amounts to a kind of divine intervention.
With
the Republican Party on an urgent mission to woo Latino voters, one of
its leading presidential candidates has been enmeshed for two weeks in a
nasty feud over his
inflammatory comments about Mexican immigrants.
“They’re bringing drugs,” Trump said in his campaign announcement speech. “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
The
comments — and many more since — have prompted an uproar among Latino
groups and acrimonious breakups between Trump and various corporate
partners. His outlandish
rhetoric and skill at occupying the national spotlight are also proving
to be dangerously toxic for the GOP brand, which remains in the
rehabilitation stage after losing the 2012 presidential race.
Univision
said it would not air his Miss Universe and Miss USA beauty pageants;
Trump sued the Spanish-language television network for $500 million.
NBCUniversal severed
all ties to him this week; he called the network “so weak and so
foolish.”
And
on Wednesday, the Macy’s department store chain dumped him, saying it
would no longer sell his menswear line. Trump said the retail chain had
“totally caved.” Later
Wednesday, Trump’s luxury hotel chain said it had been alerted to a
possible credit-card breach.
Despite
— or perhaps because of — such antics, the flashy real estate mogul
with a big bank account and an even bigger ego has rocketed into second
place in recent national
polls and in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Hillary
Rodham Clinton and other Democrats, meanwhile, are eager to make Trump
the face of the Republican Party, which is momentarily leaderless with a
disparate presidential
field and no clear front-runner.
“I
am a person of faith — and the Donald’s entry into this race can only
be attributed to the fact that the good Lord is a Democrat with a sense
of humor,” exulted Paul
Begala, veteran Democratic strategist and adviser to Priorities USA
Action, a super PAC boosting Clinton’s candidacy.
In
Iowa, Trump is tied with Ben Carson for second place behind Wisconsin
Gov. Scott Walker with 10 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University
survey released Wednesday.
In New Hampshire, a CNN-WMUR poll last week had Trump in second place
behind former Florida governor Jeb Bush with 11 percent.
Trump also comes in second behind Bush in a new national CNN-ORC poll released Wednesday.
Trump,
who claims to be worth $9 billion, has staked out populist-sounding
ground in the campaign so far, railing against the impact of illegal
immigrants, particularly
from Mexico, on the U.S. economy and vowing to “build a great wall on
our southern border” to keep them out. That message, along with promises
to restrict Chinese imports and other protectionist measures, could
resonate particularly well with some white, blue-collar
male voters, angry over the slow economic recovery and suspicious of
elite opinion in Washington.
Trump also has stood by his remarks tying immigrants to crime.
“I
like Mexico. I love the Mexican people. I do business with the Mexican
people, but you have people coming through the border that are from all
over. And they’re bad.
They’re really bad,” Trump said last weekend on CNN’s “State of the
Union.” “You have people coming in, and I’m not just saying Mexicans,
I’m talking about people that are from all over that are killers and
rapists, and they’re coming into this country.”
Leading
the Democratic charge to tie the GOP to Trump is Clinton, who has been
invoking Trump’s comments about Mexicans on the campaign trail. Notably,
she does not mention
Trump by name — perhaps hoping to associate his views with the other 15
declared or likely GOP candidates.
“Recently
a Republican candidate for president described immigrants as drug
dealers, rapists and criminals,” Clinton told a raucous rally in
Northern Virginia last week.
“Maybe he’s never met them. Maybe he’s never stopped to ask the
millions of people who love this country, work hard, and want nothing
more than a chance to build a better life for themselves and their
children what their lives are like.”
Other
Democrats have pounced as well. Housing and Urban Development Secretary
Julián Castro — a descendant of Mexican immigrants seen as rising star
in his party — said
in a recent interview that Trump was “plainly insulting Mexicans.”
“He
will be in this campaign in many ways the face of the Republican Party,
because he has higher name [identification] than almost all of them,”
Castro said. “That is
a very dumb way to begin a campaign.”
Trump and his advisers declined to comment on the record for this article.
Reince
Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, told reporters
last week that Trump’s comments were “not helpful” to the party’s
efforts to reach more diverse
voters. But, he added, “we don’t get to pick and choose who runs, who
doesn’t.”
Although
most were initially hesitant to comment, a growing number of likely or
declared GOP candidates have condemned Trump’s Mexican-bashing comments.
“I think they
are wholly inappropriate,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said last
week.
Some
of the party’s firebrands, however, supported Trump. Sen. Ted Cruz
(Tex.), a presidential candidate and tea party favorite, said this week
that Trump was “terrific”and
that he should not apologize because he “speaks the truth.” Rep. Steve
King (R-Iowa), a staunch conservative who plays an important role in
Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, said in a radio interview Wednesday
that he appreciates Trump’s “scrappiness.”
“Donald
Trump is one of the few individuals that will speak boldly about what
he believes in, and he’ll be challenged by the P.C. police, the
politically correct police,
and instead of backing up and curling up, he just goes forward,” King
said on KAYL Radio in Storm Lake, Iowa.
Clinton, though, in her Virginia speech scolded the GOP field for not speaking up more loudly to condemn Trump.
“We
need to call out derogatory language, insults, personal attacks
wherever they occur,” she said. “There is enough for us to debate
without going there.”
Begala
helped write Bill Clinton’s “Sister Souljah” speech in his 1992
presidential campaign when Clinton repudiated controversial comments
about race by a hip-hop artist.
“I know how powerful it can be to point out problems on your team,”
Begala said.
With
Trump, Begala said, Republicans “don’t know what to do about him. The
truth is, it’s very simple. What they say to friends in private is what
they ought to say to
the country in public, which is, ‘That guy’s out of line.’ ”
David Axelrod, a former campaign strategist for President Obama, said Republican candidates must develop “a Trump strategy.”
“You
heard his opening salvos, many of which clanked and created some
discomfort among Republicans,” Axelrod said. “Every Republican candidate
now has to calculate how
they deal with him, particularly in the debates. If he says something
outrageous and no one challenges him, that’s bad for them and bad for
the Republican Party.”
The
prospect of such a Trump moment in a debate invites memories of 2012
Republican primary debates that ended up becoming obstacles for the
eventual nominee, Mitt Romney.
In one debate, when audience members booed a gay soldier, neither
Romney nor any other candidate came to his defense.
Erik
Smith, a Democratic strategist who worked on Obama’s campaigns, said
the danger for Republicans is that Trump becomes “an anchor” weighing
down the party’s brand,
especially with Latino, millennial and independent voters.
“The
truth is this entire field is currently reinforcing their party’s worst
perceptions among the voters they need the most,” Smith said. “Trump
simply supercharges it.
He turns the volume up to 11.”
Some Republican strategists, however, see a silver lining.
“You
can make the argument that hyperbolic rhetoric like this paints the
rest of the field as much more moderate,” said Brian Walsh, a veteran
Republican operative. “It’s
harder in the long run to paint Republicans like Jeb Bush and Marco
Rubio as representative of the far right when that rhetorical space is
being filled by someone like Donald Trump.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment