Who's trying to pick a fight with Donald Trump and losing? Well, everyone in the Republican Party, of course, but if we're talking about just
today, that would be the Club for Growth. While that name might put you in mind of the company that purports to help balding men become less bald,
this club is best-known for its radical anti-tax, anti-spending zealotry and supports the most dystopian extremists for elective office.
And so of course, they despise Trump, who wants to protect Medicare and Social Security, raise taxes on the rich, thinks single-payer health care is a great idea, and reassures the public, "Women under my administration will be taken care of." (He cherishes women! It says so on his hat!) Talk like that has predictably got the Club fuming, and now they're contemplating a full-bore ad campaign to rip Trump apart.
But the ordinarily well-financed Club hasn't yet met with a lot of luck in trying to drum up support for this assault; the Washington Post reports that "some top GOP financiers" are worried that such an effort could "backfire." Of course it would! Everyone who tries to come at Trump sooner or later finds out that he's rubber and they're glue—very bouncy India rubber and very sticky Krazy Glue.
There's also another, much deeper problem that the Club faces, one that Michael Lind explores in a penetrating new piece in Politico Magazine: Their extremist views on the size and role of government are not popular, particularly among the oft-misunderstood segment of the GOP base known as the tea party. Lind's summation is spot-on:
The success of Trump's campaign has, if nothing else, exposed the Tea Party for what it really is; Trump's popularity is, in effect, final proof of what some of us have been arguing for years: that the Tea Party is less a libertarian movement than a right-wing version of populism. Think William Jennings Bryan or Huey Long, not Ayn Rand. Tea Partiers are less upset about the size of government overall than they are that so much of it is going to other people, especially immigrants and nonwhites. They are for government for them and against government for Not-Them.
Trump is a perfect tribune for modern-day right-wing populism, and his message has propelled him to stratospheric heights in the polls and the public consciousness. The fact that there is no "Club for Growth" candidate earning a rabid following by spreading the gospel of low taxes and low spending should tell the Club all it needs to know about how successful they're likely to be if they try to challenge Trump head-on.
It's quite ironic that the Club for Growth, which has long made life difficult for the Republican establishment by pushing candidates too far to the right, is now trying to rescue that same establishment from a candidate who, at least on matters financial, is well to the left of where the pluto-kleptocrats who run the GOP want the party to be. But now well-heeled gadflies like the Club and bog-standard Republicans like Jeb Bush are united in a shared mission: stop this fucking comb-overed maniac from destroying us.
As Jeb's experience—as everyone's experience—has shown so far, good luck with that. Trumpism is way more popular than Clubism, and you simply cannot shout The Donald down. The Republican Party has conned its core voters for years, but now they're dealing with a messenger who's telling rank-and-file conservatives what they actually want to hear, not what big business likes to pretend they want to hear. Trump's calling bullshit on the entire GOP edifice. Whether they put up their dukes or fold meekly, the Club is screwed either way.