GOP faces existential threat

The Republican Party faces a nightmare.  Two presidential candidates remain with a chance of being nominated on the first or second ballot, New York billionaire Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.  Cruz has no chance on the first, hoping for triumph on the second or third.  Trump arguably is a narcissistic, lying bully and demagogue, who cynically exploits White working class fears.  He sometimes appears to show a lack of respect for the Constitution and rule of law.  Cruz is an extremist right-winger, a rhetorical pyromaniac and obstructionist.  

Republicans and convention delegates must decide if they can live with the dark legacy of Trump or Cruz.  The Never Trump Movement’s strategy of substituting Cruz for Trump is tantamount to renunciation of Lincoln, TR, Ike, and Reagan.  Republican leaders and delegates should seek a wide-open convention to preserve GOP values, give it a chance to win the presidency and govern responsibly. 

{mosads}Trump has been compared to billionaire former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Benito Mussolini, and George Wallace.  These analogies sometimes seem apt.  Berlusconi, elected prime minister three times, was a crass demagogue.  He bragged, titillated, smeared opponents and created false expectations.  Many Italians believed he would bring efficient government and prosperity.  He did neither, leaving resentment and scandal.  Mussolini may have inspired Trump and Berlusconi, saying, “If only we give them faith that mountains can be moved, they will accept the illusion.”  Trump repeatedly pledges to “take back America” and “make it great again,” but offers no coherent governing strategy.  

Trump’s rhetoric is similar to Wallace’s in 1968 and 1972.  Like Trump, Wallace sneered at opponents, mocking “briefcase-toting bureaucrats” and “pointy-headed intellectuals.”  He excoriated the two parties, saying there was not a “dime’s worth of difference.”  Wallace exhorted voters to “send a message.”  He exploited fear, anger, and bigotry.   Wallace rallies sometimes resembled angry mobs.  Trump often has stoked audiences’ violent impulses, raising the specter of riots if he is not nominated. 

If elected, Trump could never meet larger-than-life expectations he created.  Trump has fanatical support from many Blue Collar Whites, who seek a champion to slay twin dragons of globalization and unfair trade.  Trump is not their savior.  His tax cuts would add over $10 trillion to national debt and exacerbate economic inequality.  His protectionism, with draconian tariffs, could trigger a trade war, severe recession and wreak havoc with manufacturing and exports. 

Trump sometimes behaves like Mussolini, the Euro right, and Latin American caudillos, appearing to belittle democracy, the Constitution, and the law.  He retweeted neo-Nazi and White supremacist tweets, including one with a swastika-like emblem claiming Blacks perpetrate most murders of Whites.  He also retweeted a Mussolini quote. 

Trump vows to scale back the 1^st Amendment, enabling him to successfully sue critics.  He may emulate President Obama’s extra-Constitutional executive orders to halt remittances to Mexico.  He says he will consider entering American Muslims in a registry, arguably rolling back the 4^th Amendment by blanketing them with surveillance, not to mention his ban on Muslim visitors and immigrants.  Trump threatens to go “way beyond” waterboarding in torturing suspected terrorists and to target innocents in military operations, renouncing the Geneva Convention.  His xenophobic, incendiary rhetoric incurs minorities’ enmity, a parallel with the Euro right. 

Like Trump, Cruz hardly follows in Lincoln or Reagan’s footsteps.  Cruz lambastes liberals as “waging jihad” on American and Judeo-Christian values.  Like Trump, he demands deportation of 12 million illegal immigrants.  Cruz, echoing Trump, has questioned birth-right citizenship under the 14^th Amendment.  After ISIS terrorist attacks in Belgium, he called for police to mount military-style patrols of Muslim communities.  He says he will consider rescinding the ban on enhanced interrogation.  Cruz states he will “carpet bomb” ISIS, “until the “sands glow,” possibly casting aside the Geneva Convention.

A Trump or Cruz nomination would make a mockery of GOP values.  Republicans can seek a contested convention to choose a nominee true to traditional values – Ohio Governor John Kasich who lags way behind in delegates, reluctant House Speaker Paul Ryan, 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, retired General Jim Mattis, or another “White Knight” as in yesteryear’s multi-ballot conventions.  Alternatively, they can renounce American and Republican values.  Lincoln could have been speaking to today’s Republicans, when he said, “We cannot escape history.  We will be remembered in spite of ourselves.  The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”  History is watching.

Davis is a retired intelligence officer, who worked for the US Army Special Operations Command, Defense Intelligence Agency, and CIA.