Can GOP Factions Resolve the Intra-Party Feud after 2016?
If Trump loses, Republicans have no choice but to to heal the bitter split.
By Ramesh Ponnuru — August 31, 2016
Most people who work in Republican politics want Donald Trump to win but think he will lose. They hope that afterward the party will unify in opposition to President Hillary Clinton. They are, however, underestimating the divisions in their party that Trump’s campaign has revealed.
From the standpoint of Republican unity, the worst possible outcome of the November election would be a narrow defeat for Trump. The nominee’s Republican supporters would be enraged at those Republicans who balked at Trump, and the party would be consumed by recriminations.
A larger defeat would be harder to pin on “Never Trump” Republicans. If Trump underperforms among independents as well as Republicans; if he runs behind most Republican Senate candidates, in a reversal of the pattern of the last two presidential elections; if he gets a lower percentage of the vote than Romney, even though Romney was running against an incumbent and a politician better liked than Hillary Clinton: The more such results, the more those Republicans who warned that Trump would be a disastrous candidate will be proven right, and be seen to be proven right.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/node/439518/print
