The Atlantic (Opinion)
By Peter Beinart
November 30, 2015
Give
Donald Trump this: He has taught Americans something about the
candidates he’s running against. He has exposed many of them as
political cowards.
In
August, after Trump called undocumented Mexican immigrants “rapists”
and vowed to build a wall along America’s southern border, Jeb Bush
traveled to South Texas to
respond. Bush’s wife is Mexican American; he has said he’s “immersed in
the immigrant experience”; he has even claimed to be Hispanic himself.
Yet he didn’t call Trump’s proposals immoral or bigoted, since that
might offend Trump’s nativist base. Instead,
Bush declared: “Mr. Trump’s plans are not grounded in conservative
principles. His proposal is unrealistic. It would cost hundreds of
billions of dollars.” In other words, demonizing and rounding up
undocumented Mexican immigrants is fine, so long as it’s
done cheap.
Trump’s
other opponents have been equally fainthearted. In September, a New
Hampshire man asked whether “we can get rid” of Muslims, and Trump
replied, “We’re going to
be looking at that and plenty of other things.” Asked about Trump’s
comments, Ted Cruz—who hopes that by hugging Trump close, he’ll
eventually win over Trump’s voters—declared, “The American people are
not interested in the food fight that reporters are trying
to stir up.”
Then,
in November, when Trump said “thousands” of New Jersey Muslims
celebrated the 9/11 attacks, a claim that has now been completely
debunked, New Jersey Governor Chris
Christie, in a moment of uncharacteristic modesty, remarked, “I think
if it had happened, I would remember it, but, you know, there could be
things I forget, too.” Christie, it’s worth noting, has dubbed his
travels through New Hampshire the “tell-it-like-it-is”
tour.
But
the spinelessness reached new heights this Sunday. On CBS’s Face the
Nation, John Dickerson asked Bush about a statement by one of Bush’s
advisers that Trump’s plan
for registering Muslims is “fascist.” Bush ignored the question.
Instead he called Trump “uninformed,” “wrong on Syria,” and “not a
serious leader.” The strategy was clear: Avoid defending the rights of
Muslim Americans, since there’s little market for that
among GOP primary voters. Instead, call Trump a lightweight and
insufficiently hawkish, and therefore somehow get to his right.
Dickerson
then asked Jeb, “If [Trump] became the nominee, would you still support
him?” Bush responded, “I have great doubts about Donald Trump’s ability
to be commander
in chief,” but “anybody is better than Hillary Clinton.” When Dickerson
asked why “specifically” Trump is better than Clinton, Jeb ignored the
question, declaring, “The more they hear of [Trump], the less likely it
is he’s going to get the Republican nomination.”
On
ABC’s This Week, John Kasich was even worse. Martha Raddatz began by
asking the Ohio governor about an ad of his that “appears to compare
Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Is that the comparison?” Of course it’s the comparison. The ad consists
entirely of a paraphrase by Colonel Tom Moe of German Pastor Martin
Niemoller’s famous statement that because he did not stand up for
Hitler’s initial victims, there was ultimately no
one left to stand up for him. Moe just substitutes Trump’s targets for
Hitler’s.
Bush, Kasich, and the other GOP candidates won’t clearly repudiate Trump because they’re afraid of angering his voters.
Kasich’s
answer was astonishing. Asked if he was comparing Trump to Hitler, he
began by saying no. Then he distanced himself from his own ad. “This is
Colonel Tom Moe,”
Kasich explained. “He was a POW for five years in North Vietnam, was
beaten and tortured, and came within an inch of losing his own life. And
these are his words. He feels very strongly about a man who divides
us.”
Perplexed,
Raddatz interjected, “But it is your ad.” To which Kasich replied, “But
it’s his words.” Evidently candidates are only responsible for the
words in their advertisements
that they utter themselves.
Raddatz
then asked the obvious follow-up: Does the fact that you’re running an
ad comparing Trump to Hitler “mean you would not support him if he were
the nominee?”
Kasich refused to answer: “Well, he’s not going to be the nominee.”
Raddatz tried again: “But answer that question. You say he won’t get the nomination. But if he does, will you support him?”
Kasich non-answered again: “He’s not going to. So we’re not even going to go there.”
Raddatz tried one last time: “So would you support him, Governor Kasich, if he is the Republican nominee?”
Kasich
evaded one last time: “He’s not going to make it ... It’s just not
going to happen, Martha. And everybody needs to get over it and take a
deep breath.”
So
when the would-be leader of your country scapegoats and threatens its
most vulnerable groups, the correct response is to “take a deep breath”
because such threats will
never be carried out? Perhaps Kasich should read Niemoller’s words
again.
It’s
not hard to understand what’s going on here. Bush, Kasich, and the
other GOP candidates won’t clearly repudiate Trump because they’re
afraid of angering his voters.
They’re also afraid of angering him. After all, if Republican
candidates say they won’t endorse Trump if he wins the GOP nomination,
that makes it easier for Trump to return the favor—and run as a
third-party candidate next fall.
But
if there’s one thing that should be clear about Trump by now, it’s that
he won’t be hindered by logic or shame. If the billionaire bigot
decides it’s in his interest
to run as an independent, it won’t matter one whit whether candidates
like Bush and Kasich agreed to endorse him. Trump will do whatever keeps
him in the camera’s gaze.
There’s
an irony here. When it comes to Vladimir Putin, ISIS, and Iran, the GOP
candidates love denouncing “appeasement.” Yet when it comes to Trump,
appeasement is their
core strategy. They’re desperate to stop him. But they won’t call him a
demagogue or a bigot or worse than Hillary Clinton, because that
entails political risk. So they dissemble and evade and thus remind
voters why they hate professional politicians. Which
makes Trump stronger still.
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