A Hostile Takeover Of The GOP-- It Is Now The Trump Party

I looked at a poll this week that showed 75% of Republicans saying they would vote for Trump in a 2020 poll. 1% said they favored Mitt Romney. Romney's going to be the next senator from Utah but will he be the voice of a GOP resistance? He'll bide his time and see how much Trump continues to stumble. Last month he said he'll make a decision on supporting Trump in 2020 'down the road'. He told CNN that he assumed there would be Republican contenders who will challenge Trump, but underscored, "I also assume that President Trump will be the nominee of our party in 2020." Imagine that Romney is considering supporting this guy-- "recklessness in the extreme... very very not smart... dishonesty is Donald Trump's hallmark... the bullying, the greed, the showing off, the misogyny, the absurd 3rd grade theatrics... a conman, a fake... too much to hide... a phony, a fraud; his promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University."



Friday, Alex Isenstadt wrote from from Deer Valley, Utah, Romney predicted to a group of major GOP donors that Trump easily capture the Republican Party’s 2020 nomination and will then be reelected.

He said Trump’s political fortunes would be bolstered by a pair of factors: an improving economy and the likelihood that Democrats would choose an outside-the-mainstream candidate.

“I think President Trump will be re-nominated by my party easily, and I think he’ll be reelected solidly,” Romney said.

“I think that not just because of the strong economy and because people are increasingly seeing rising wages, but I think it’s also true because I think our Democrat friends are likely to nominate someone who is really out of the mainstream of American thought and will make it easier for a president who is presiding over a growing economy,” he added.

That was a swipe at Bernie and, let's remember that, politically, Romney has been wrong about a great deal. And he's wrong about this as well. Last week, Doyle McManus, in an L.A. Times OpEd asked if the GOP will completely reshape itself in Trump's image? The GOP is now the Trump Party, not the Romney Party-- and not even remotely mainstream.

We’re full swing into primary season for the midterms, and where are the Republican voices offering any alternative to Trumpism? Traditionalist conservatives have been shuffled off the stage. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona decried Trump’s “regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals.” He’s retiring. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, who called the White House “an adult day care center,” is retiring too. And Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who denounced Trump’s “half-baked, spurious nationalism,” is dying of cancer. Mitt Romney, who once called Trump a fraud, is running to be the next senator from Utah; now the harshest thing he’ll say is that the president isn’t “a role model for my grandkids.”

The collapse of other Republicans’ ability to push back against Trump is the most worrisome political development of the last year, say political scientists. That’s right, the biggest long-term threat to the health of the nation, they say, is not tax cuts favoring the wealthy, not trade wars and not radical deregulation-- but the hostile takeover of the GOP.

...The Gallup Poll reported last week that 87% of GOP voters approve of what he’s doing. As a result, Republicans who want to survive their primaries won’t say a word against the boss in public.

Trump also appears to be radicalizing Republican voters — shaping their views to follow his. The polling organization YouGov reported last month that 75% of Republican voters agree with Trump that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt,” and 61% think the president is being framed. Those numbers have gone up as Trump has pressed his case against the FBI.

And that brings us to this year’s midterm elections, including Tuesday’s primaries in California. Long term, the outcomes will determine more than which party holds the majority in the House or Senate. The vote will also hold a message for every Republican officeholder: Was Trump a boost or a burden?

If the party holds on to its House and Senate majorities, many of its candidates, officeholders and strategists will conclude that Trump has been right all along. The GOP will continue remolding itself in the image of Trump-- populist, authoritarian, anti-immigrant.

Only if a “blue wave” of Democratic votes sweeps not just California, but also swing states, will the party open the question of whether Ohio Gov. John Kasich or someone else should run against Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2020.

These midterms will be an important signal to the GOP as it considers if it wants more Trump or less-- and whether choosing a volatile populist as its nominee turns out to be a one-time anomaly or a pattern for the future.

“I’m not so worried about Donald Trump as a threat to American democracy, because he’s not very competent,” [author of The People vs. Democracy, Yascha] Mounk said. “I’m more worried about what would happen if at some point we were to elect a more competent version.”