These are actually Donald Trump supporters in India burning this photo of the Republican nominee in May, but plenty of Republicans would like to warm their hands by this kind of fire. (Photo by Ritesh Shukla/NurPhoto. Sipa via AP Images)
The Year of Trump has been a nightmare for the officials running the GOP. The party has been plunged into chaos, with many members openly rejecting a candidate who has bragged about grabbing women by the pussy. Others who nominally support Trump, like House Speaker Paul Ryan, are distancing themselves from him the way you might a high school friend who started embarrassing you at every party you invited him to. Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus was reportedly losing faith in his candidate for a moment, and had to reassure everyone that Trump and the leaders of the RNC aren't fighting, and "remain very much involved and together in all levels in making these decisions."
"People look at Trump and say, 'Oh that's who you are! That's who the Republican party is!'" Mickey Edwards, a former Oklahoma congressman who is a prominent NeverTrump Republican, lamented to me.
In Edwards's estimation, a few problems converged to create the Trump phenomenon: a crowded primary field in which "everybody in our party knew that Hillary how much the party, as a private association of likeminded individuals can say, 'You can't tell us what to do because we're a club!'"
Putnam suggested that the GOP focus less on the kinds of anti-populist efforts a future Trump-esque candidate might label "rigging the system," and more on just cleaning up some of the procedures that made the process chaotic in 2016.
Finally, there's the issue of 2016's unusually large pool of candidates, which resulted not just in a lot battles over the same constituencies, but in a chaotic and sometimes embarrassing debate stage. Putnam said that reforms here wouldn't be about party primary rules, but rather the debate committee. "The question is going to quickly become what metric or metrics best determine who will be among the six or so candidates who make the cut," Putnam said.
This smaller pool, Edwards thinks, would correct a system in which "a guy gets 20 or 25 percent, and the word is that he's on a roll, and he's earning the nomination, but he didn't get anywhere close to earning the nomination."
Edwards is optimistic about the possibility of rapid changes that could prevent another Trump, but he worries they'll come with a big downside: "One of the things that's worst for me to say as a Republican is that I think it's going to take a major disaster for this to happen." Change will probably come about, he thinks, if the GOP lost not just the White House yet again, but control of Congress.
"I think it's gonna have to be a real wipeout," he told me. And even then, he said, "just changing the rules isn't going to make everything suddenly better."
Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.
from VICE http://ift.tt/2dLa2m9
via cheap web hosting
No comments:
Post a Comment