This is a great article on how the GOP failed the Republican party in 2016.
As the carnage of World War I widened, Barbara Tuchman recounts in âThe Guns of August,â a German leader asked a colleague, âHow did it all happen?â âAh,â replied the other, âif only one knew.â
A century later, there is no mystery to the carnage that President Donald Trump has wrought. Everything we have seen in these first 140 daysâthe splintering of the Western alliance, the grifterâs ethics he and his family embody, the breathtaking ignorance of history, geopolitics and government, the jaw-dropping egomania, the sheer incompetence and contempt for democratic normsâwas on full display from the moment his campaign began. And thatâs not just what Democrats thinkâitâs what many prominent Republicans have said all along.
Once Trump was elected, his foes began to indulge in a series of fantasies about how to prevent his ascendancy or how to remove him from power. The electors should refuse to vote for him (which would have thrown the election into the House, which would have chosen Trump); the Cabinet and the vice president should use the 25th Amendment to declare him unable to exercise his duties (a scenario, as I have written here earlier, that works just fine on TV melodramas like â24â and âScandalâ); Congress should impeach him (which would require 20 GOP House members and 19 Republican senators to join every Democratic lawmaker).
So this may be a good time to remember that in a key sense, Trump happened because a well-established, real-life mechanism that was in the best position to prevent a Trump presidency failed. That institution was the Republican Party.
It is not entirely true that Trump engineered a âhostile takeoverâ of the GOP, provided that the party is defined more broadly than elected officials and party insiders. As Conor Friedersdorf wrote last year in the Atlantic: âthe elements of the party that sent pro-Trump cues or 'Trump is at least acceptableâ signals to primary votersâRush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Breitbart.com, The Drudge Report, The New York Post, Bill OâReilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, Rick Scott, Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaioâare simply more powerful, relative to National Review, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and other âTrump is unacceptableâ forces, than previously thought.â
What is true, however, is that the governing wing of the party was fully aware that Trump was not to be trusted with the levers of power. In January of last year, National Review devoted an entire issue to a symposium where 22 prominent Republicans and conservatives detailed their militant opposition to the candidate Texas Governor Rick Perryâwho is now Trumpâs energy secretaryâcalled âa cancerâ on the American political system. Until his nomination was all but assured, Trump had the backing of a lone Republican senator, Sessions (who is now his embattled attorney general).
More broadly, the whole idea of a disparate party coming together at a convention was, for decades, rooted in the âvettingâ process; those experienced in the mechanics of politics and governments would decide which of the candidates were best equipped to win an election and carry out the partyâs agenda in Washington. Itâs beyond obvious that in the decades since primaries replaced power brokers as the delegate-selecting process, this role has attenuated. But it survives today as an âIn-Case-Of-Emergency-Break-Glassâ tool. And the question is: Why didnât the Republican Party employ it?
Explanations have ranged from the fragmented nature of the oppositionâno early consensus choice as with George W. Bush in 2000âto the underestimation of Trumpâs appeal (the establishment candidates like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Christie spent their time and money attacking each other, while Ted Cruz was constantly praising Trump, hoping to ride in his wake when he collapsed).
But one often overlooked reasonâand one for parties to remember if they hope to avoid future Trumpsâis that the rules of the GOP greatly benefited Trump. The party allows winner-take-all primaries by congressional district or statewideâ which, in many states, hugely magnified Trumpâs delegate totals. Trump won 32 percent of the South Carolina vote but all 50 delegates. He won 46 percent of the Florida vote but all 99 delegates. He won 39 percent of the Illinois vote, but 80 percent of the 69 delegates. By contrast, Democratsâwho abolished winner-take-all primaries more than 40 years ago, insist on a proportional system, much like parents cut the cake at a childrenâs birthday party. The result is that an intensely motivated minority cannot seize the lionâs share of delegates.
Another rule may well have stayed the hand of Republicans who saw in Trump an unacceptable nominee. The Democratic Party gives more than 700 people seats as âsuperdelegates.â Every senator, every House member, every governor and a regiment of party officials are, by rule, unbound. They make up 15 percent of the total votes at the convention. Republicans only have some 150 âautomaticâ delegatesâ7 percent of the totalâand they must vote the way their stateâs primary voters did. Thus, the whole idea of an emergency brake is almost nonexistent in the GOP.
Whether such tools should exist is a matter of debate. Many Democrats on their partyâs left disdain the idea of such backroom politics (although toward the end of the 2016 primary season, Vermont Senator Bernie Sandersâ backers were urging superdelegates to vote for him on the grounds that he was the more electable candidate in November). If a candidate comes to the convention with more votes than anyone else, but with more voters having chosen a different candidate, whatâs the ârightâ thing for an unbound delegate to do? The famous assertion by Edmund Burke that âyour representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinionâ is very much out of fashion among the populist movements on left and right.
But either by cluelessness or willful design, the Republican Party had put itself in a position where one of the most significant functions of a partyâthe âvettingâ of its prospective nomineeâwas rendered impotent.
And we are living with that institutional failure every day."
The GOP That Failed
54% of the Republican party did not vote for Donald Trump. Trump was the accidential nominee for a variety comical errors within the GOP and their decisions. Go to this link and you can read the errors committed by the GOP.
Donald Trump the ACCIDENTAL nominee
As the carnage of World War I widened, Barbara Tuchman recounts in âThe Guns of August,â a German leader asked a colleague, âHow did it all happen?â âAh,â replied the other, âif only one knew.â
A century later, there is no mystery to the carnage that President Donald Trump has wrought. Everything we have seen in these first 140 daysâthe splintering of the Western alliance, the grifterâs ethics he and his family embody, the breathtaking ignorance of history, geopolitics and government, the jaw-dropping egomania, the sheer incompetence and contempt for democratic normsâwas on full display from the moment his campaign began. And thatâs not just what Democrats thinkâitâs what many prominent Republicans have said all along.
Once Trump was elected, his foes began to indulge in a series of fantasies about how to prevent his ascendancy or how to remove him from power. The electors should refuse to vote for him (which would have thrown the election into the House, which would have chosen Trump); the Cabinet and the vice president should use the 25th Amendment to declare him unable to exercise his duties (a scenario, as I have written here earlier, that works just fine on TV melodramas like â24â and âScandalâ); Congress should impeach him (which would require 20 GOP House members and 19 Republican senators to join every Democratic lawmaker).
So this may be a good time to remember that in a key sense, Trump happened because a well-established, real-life mechanism that was in the best position to prevent a Trump presidency failed. That institution was the Republican Party.
It is not entirely true that Trump engineered a âhostile takeoverâ of the GOP, provided that the party is defined more broadly than elected officials and party insiders. As Conor Friedersdorf wrote last year in the Atlantic: âthe elements of the party that sent pro-Trump cues or 'Trump is at least acceptableâ signals to primary votersâRush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Breitbart.com, The Drudge Report, The New York Post, Bill OâReilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Jeff Sessions, Rick Scott, Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaioâare simply more powerful, relative to National Review, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and other âTrump is unacceptableâ forces, than previously thought.â
What is true, however, is that the governing wing of the party was fully aware that Trump was not to be trusted with the levers of power. In January of last year, National Review devoted an entire issue to a symposium where 22 prominent Republicans and conservatives detailed their militant opposition to the candidate Texas Governor Rick Perryâwho is now Trumpâs energy secretaryâcalled âa cancerâ on the American political system. Until his nomination was all but assured, Trump had the backing of a lone Republican senator, Sessions (who is now his embattled attorney general).
More broadly, the whole idea of a disparate party coming together at a convention was, for decades, rooted in the âvettingâ process; those experienced in the mechanics of politics and governments would decide which of the candidates were best equipped to win an election and carry out the partyâs agenda in Washington. Itâs beyond obvious that in the decades since primaries replaced power brokers as the delegate-selecting process, this role has attenuated. But it survives today as an âIn-Case-Of-Emergency-Break-Glassâ tool. And the question is: Why didnât the Republican Party employ it?
Explanations have ranged from the fragmented nature of the oppositionâno early consensus choice as with George W. Bush in 2000âto the underestimation of Trumpâs appeal (the establishment candidates like Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Christie spent their time and money attacking each other, while Ted Cruz was constantly praising Trump, hoping to ride in his wake when he collapsed).
But one often overlooked reasonâand one for parties to remember if they hope to avoid future Trumpsâis that the rules of the GOP greatly benefited Trump. The party allows winner-take-all primaries by congressional district or statewideâ which, in many states, hugely magnified Trumpâs delegate totals. Trump won 32 percent of the South Carolina vote but all 50 delegates. He won 46 percent of the Florida vote but all 99 delegates. He won 39 percent of the Illinois vote, but 80 percent of the 69 delegates. By contrast, Democratsâwho abolished winner-take-all primaries more than 40 years ago, insist on a proportional system, much like parents cut the cake at a childrenâs birthday party. The result is that an intensely motivated minority cannot seize the lionâs share of delegates.
Another rule may well have stayed the hand of Republicans who saw in Trump an unacceptable nominee. The Democratic Party gives more than 700 people seats as âsuperdelegates.â Every senator, every House member, every governor and a regiment of party officials are, by rule, unbound. They make up 15 percent of the total votes at the convention. Republicans only have some 150 âautomaticâ delegatesâ7 percent of the totalâand they must vote the way their stateâs primary voters did. Thus, the whole idea of an emergency brake is almost nonexistent in the GOP.
Whether such tools should exist is a matter of debate. Many Democrats on their partyâs left disdain the idea of such backroom politics (although toward the end of the 2016 primary season, Vermont Senator Bernie Sandersâ backers were urging superdelegates to vote for him on the grounds that he was the more electable candidate in November). If a candidate comes to the convention with more votes than anyone else, but with more voters having chosen a different candidate, whatâs the ârightâ thing for an unbound delegate to do? The famous assertion by Edmund Burke that âyour representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinionâ is very much out of fashion among the populist movements on left and right.
But either by cluelessness or willful design, the Republican Party had put itself in a position where one of the most significant functions of a partyâthe âvettingâ of its prospective nomineeâwas rendered impotent.
And we are living with that institutional failure every day."
The GOP That Failed
54% of the Republican party did not vote for Donald Trump. Trump was the accidential nominee for a variety comical errors within the GOP and their decisions. Go to this link and you can read the errors committed by the GOP.
Donald Trump the ACCIDENTAL nominee
