Republican leaders seriously,
seriously do not like the entry of Donald Trump into their new-and-improved-for-2016
"serious" presidential race.
“Donald Trump is like watching a road-side accident,” said former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. “Everybody pulls over to see the mess. And Trump thinks that’s entertainment. But running for president is serious. And the risk for the party is he tarnishes everybody.” [...]
“I’m not excited about somebody as divisive as Trump or somebody as obnoxious as Trump being on the debate stage,” one RNC member confessed.
And yet actual voting members of the Republican Party, as opposed to the poor sops who have to run these things, are saying that they'll vote for him, so according to the current rules that's exactly where he'll be. He's not the top of the pack, but he has a higher standing in the polls than:
Rick Santorum, who won 11 states and around 4 million votes last cycle; over Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the popular governor of a key swing state; over South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a leading foreign policy voice in the field; and over Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, known as a policy wonk.
So there's yer problem. The leadership of the party hates him for being an obnoxious asshole who spouts racist sentiments and bizarre conspiracy theories. The actual membership of the party like him very much for being an obnoxious asshole who spouts racist sentiments and bizarre conspiracy theories. More than any of those other (cough) "policy wonks," they identify with
him.
Perhaps—and this is just a thought—the Republican establishment that worries about these things should fret less about how to get the horrible person who makes them look bad out of the race, and more time worrying about why the conservative base that they have been cultivating and catering to wants to keep him there.
We'll close with this particular bit of whining, because it's too wonderful to pass up:
“The challenge with somebody like him is that when you’re running in these races, there’s sort of an assumption that you’re racing with professionals,” said Katie Packer Gage, a former deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney. “He makes up facts. It’s a challenge because he’s very unpredictable.”
Yes, imagine having a Republican candidate on the national debate stage who
made up facts. Someone who doesn't focus on the hard questions America is facing today, like whether the Obama death panels are coming for
all the members of your family or just the elderly ones, but instead just "makes things up."
Quelle horreur.
