Can the Republican Party Be Saved?
By David Thornton | May 18, 2017, 09:40am | @captainkudzu In retrospect, the GOP was in trouble as soon as Donald Trump became the frontrunner in the Republican primary. The outsider with no government experience knocked the party on its ear, dispatching with relative ease 16 experienced, longtime party members who many Trump supporters denounced as “RINOs.”
In fact, it was Trump who was the RINO. Trump was a Republican in name only who had frequently changed parties and who didn’t share many of the Republican Party’s core tenets such as free trade, a commitment to cut government spending and to shrink government. Trump ran a nationalist, anti-establishment campaign that focused on immigration, a hot button issue that had historically split the GOP down the middle. Nevertheless, as Trump became the inevitable nominee, Republicans mostly embraced him as “better than Hillary.”
From the moment that Trump won the nomination, the party was in trouble. Even though a large minority argued that Trump was both unelectable and unfit, after he won the primary there was no real chance to find a better candidate. Never Trumpers were proven wrong on the charge of electability, but Trump is proving them right about his fitness to govern.
Once Trump won the nomination, denying it to him would have split the party between the Trump base, many of whom may not have been Republicans before 2016, and, for lack of a better term, the party establishment. Hillary would have cruised to the White House, a price that was too much to pay for many Republicans.
Four months into the Trump Administration, the new president has been rocked by one scandal after another, many of his own making. Trump’s positive, lasting accomplishments, excluding Executive Orders, so far number about one: Neil Gorsuch.
As the scandals get more serious, such as possible obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation and jeopardizing national security by haphazardly sharing classified information, more Republicans will soon be looking to extricate themselves from their marriage of convenience to Donald Trump. The question is whether they can do so without destroying their party.
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http://theresurgent.com/can-the-republican-party-be-saved/
