Donald Trump may not be the best candidate for President of the United States, but he may win the Republican nomination. Unfortunately, Washington is currently a total failure and there is significant dissatisfaction with the governing class throughout the nation. This reminds me of the “silent majority” when Richard Nixon was elected President. Trump may never be President; however, he has touched the angst that has been festering for years and years, election after election.
This early in the presidential campaign, some polls now have Trump only six points behind Hillary Clinton. This may well demonstrate Trump’s appeal and Hillary’s vulnerability. Trump makes points that resonate with Republican voters and appears to be gaining strength with independents and even some Democrats.
Of course, Trump has yet to acknowledge that it will be impossible to implement his proposals without the support of the U.S. Congress. He will need a Republican Senate and House in order to be successful. And his continual bashing of Congress will not help him achieve his objectives.
Trump, a born salesman and showman, is selling numerous ideas that may be thin on details, but appeal to many Americans’ instincts. The current administration and its former Secretary of State have disappointed and disaffected many American voters.
The Republican Party needs to understand the Trump surge and its message…the desire for change and a strong leader…the willingness to listen to straight talk…the hankering for a strong military…the urgency to take measures to deal with the nation’s immigration dilemma. These and the availability of good paying jobs are all issues that affect most Americans. Apparently, many voters see the need for a change and Trump offers promises, if not specifics.
The GOP race for the nomination for President has numerous candidates vying for the top spot. They are competent candidates with interesting positions on the issues. There are some candidates whose appeal is mainly directed at specific segments of the Republican Party, but certainly do not have the broad appeal to win the White House in 2016.
In politics, you run to win and win to govern. Perhaps the foremost challenge for the GOP in the next election will be choosing a nominee who can win the presidency.
It is painfully clear, after eight years of the current administration, that the U.S. has many major challenges, both foreign and domestic. The challenges in foreign policy are tremendous. The Iran deal, the threats from an aggressive Russia, the continued threat of ISIS, the implosion of Iraq, the need for support of freedom in Ukraine, and the economic rise of China are only a few of the challenges facing the next President of the United States.
It will take a strong, informed, and thoughtful leader to handle these challenges and threats, let alone the many domestic issues plaguing the United States.
The voters of the nation chose for the last eight years to elect a President whose programs and directions have not settled well with many Americans; therefore, it becomes imperative for the Republican Party to select as the nominee a candidate with views that differ from the current group of Democratic candidates.
The possibility of moving even further to the left or perpetuating the liberal dogma of the past are the only options these candidates appear to offer.
The Republican Party and its message must appeal to the center of the American electorate.
Donald Trump…really?!
Stephan Sonn says
Just which center does the white/right majority
of the Republican party occupy?
Also at least 20 states should be renamed Texas.
Tom TImberman says
Mr. Hall contributed a valuable observation that many commentators and candidates themselves have not; namely, that Donald Trump must be evaluated as if he were the Republican presidential candidate. If I agreed that Washington, i.e. the US Government, was a “total failure”, then the question would be whether Donald Trump is capable of reversing that situation. Fortunately for the Donald, Washington is not a total failure.
Despite the attacks on his agenda, his legislation and on him personally, President Obama’s Administration has been very successful, some facts:
(1) the economy is growing steadily despite international challenges , unemployment is down to December 2007 levels and the deficit is 66% lower than it was in FY2009; (2) the US is not involved in major military action, thus hundreds of Americans are not being killed or wounded and the $2trillion off-budget appropriation for Iraq and Afghanistan has not been repeated; these latter points, though, strike some Americans as evidence of weakness, not wisdom; (3) thanks to the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans have health insurance for the first time and (4) US and Israeli experts strongly support the US led arms-control negotiations with Iran, in partnership with the richest and most powerful nations on Earth, because it has the potential to reshape America’s relationships in the Middle East and to make Israel’s security environment less threatening; in this context it’s good to recall Israel is the only nuclear armed state in the region.
And finally, Mr. Hall links three extremely important democratic principles: (1) “you run to win and win to govern”; and (2)/(3) “The voters…chose for the last eight years to elect a President whose programs and directions have not settled well with many Americans”. Note: President Obama won two national election.
We should all pause for the next 14 months, particularly in the general election, and ask how X or Y would govern and how that would impact on me, my family, my friends and on all 321 million Americans. We should answer that question based on reason, facts and not emotions. A brief reflection on the common sense of the US Constitution and its drafters: Democracy-in-action to hem meant popular votes for candidates and policies with the outcome determined by which option the majority selected. This is the underlying Constitutional process by which Americans achieve governance by the people, for the people and of the people.
James Nick says
Yes, Mr Hall, Donald Trump is indeed an embarrassment, isn’t he? Really! No doubt about it, Trump is a modern-day P. T. Barnum who is a natural at manipulating the media to feed into his self-absorbed narcissism. He started out as a joke but no one is laughing now. At the moment, he is smoking his competition and forcing both the lunatic fringe wannabes as well as many, so-called, establishment candidates into a black hole of indefensible far right policy positions that simply won’t play well in the general election. As a group, the entire slate of candidates is systematically alienating large swaths of the electorate by trying to out-Trump Trump. There were early indications that this GOP primary season was going to be vastly entertaining but never in my wildest imagination did I expect to see a destructive demolition derby like this.
But before we all shed a tear it should be noted that the Republicans absolutely deserve Donald Trump. As parroted here by Mr Hall, their leaders have harangued their base for decades about how their failed government is the root of all problems. And the hyperbolic, anti-intellectual, anti-science tabloid journalism(?) that spews 24/7 from the GOP propaganda apparatus at FOX News has so successfully blurred the lines between entertainment and reality that a fair proportion of the Republican base can no longer separate the two as evidenced by Trump’s poll numbers,. They created the monster and now it’s out of their control. The only question is whether the combined billions of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson can marginalize Trump before he does irreversible damage to their grand plan of buying the US government in 2016.
Lastly, let’s all recall what happened the last time we turned over the keys to White House to the Republicans: Two disastrous wars, one fraudulent, mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina and Rita, war profiteering by Dick Cheney, and huge tax cuts for the rich that helped the national debt balloon out of control in tandem with defense spending. And if that was not enough, all this mayhem was bookended in the beginning by the most massive attack on the homeland in history that may have been headed off if Bush had heeded credible intelligence and at the end by a monumental global financial meltdown due to rampant Wall Street deregulation.
It has been traditional in US politics for presidential candidates to seek the endorsement by the most recent occupant of the White House from their party. So where’s Dubya? For good reason Bush II is Kryptonite to the current crop of GOP aspirants, even for his brother. It’s a tacit admission that Bush II was a monumental disaster of domestic and foreign policy, that we are only now just digging ourselves out of.
The scary part is that the central tenets of Bush-era economic and foreign doctrine pretty much remain as firmly entrenched as ever in the GOP. The economic proposals for all the candidates combine deep tax cuts for the rich, higher defense spending, the demise of Social Security and Medicare, return to the train-wreck of a pre-Obamacare health care system, and just a general refusal to accept that revenues must bear some relationship to expenditures. And then, of course, there is war. The Republicans can never seem to get enough war: war with Iran, war with ISIS, war with Russia, war with China.
As one wag once said, “The Republicans keep telling us that government doesn’t work then they get elected and prove it”.
Stephan Sonn says
There is a traditional brilliance to the writing that appears here in Fletcher’s flurry. It is practically a debate set-up for Mr. Timberman and Mr. Nick who wrote in style so well to a cause of order better presented in another less chaotic slice of modern history.
I can remember this reasoning and ideal well when one of my professors at University of Florida so glowingly spoke of how President Eisenhower departed with warnings of The Military Industrial Complex. And that foretold the future of almost three generations since 1960, right down to the still present day leftover neo-con warmongers, still at work.
But gentlemen, the current advance of expedient chaos makes an older reasoning not an effective template for this world in these times. It is your reality fix parsing another school of thought, not linked to the dynamics of today’s world, which is by communication alone, spawn much more nuance
Republicans are not even relevant here. Not because they have morphed stupid but because they are displaced as the actual leaders in the pivotal positions. They were mooted in 2010 by the gorilla politics of the Koch sponsored Tea Party and apparatus. And they were written out of the book by powers quite beyond their capacity to grasp
So now, some future casting. Given the nature and numbers of 2016 some humane Democrat will prevail as president but with much to worry about rigging the electronics at the polls and in the state legislatures.
Rule by presidential edict will be term by term, That would be just short of martial law and the dynamics and creativity of this existence, environmentally, fiscally and those of human development will be cobbled by internal culture wars played to that purpose, by fools for narrow gain with no view to consequence.
Survival has taken on a whole new meaning.