The Republican Party is being buried under a Trumpslide, and it threatens to cover North Carolina and the entire country.
Donald Trump should have been rejected as a presidential candidate a long time ago. Instead, it appears he’ll win the Republican nomination. On March 15, North Carolina GOP voters might help him.
Marco Rubio calls Trump a “con man.” Ted Cruz suggested Trump won’t release his tax returns because they might reveal “business dealings with the mob.” John Hood, chairman of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, called Trump “a dangerous charlatan.” Speaking in Utah Thursday, 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said: “Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. ... He’s playing the American public for suckers.”
Trump makes disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants and Muslims. He mimicked a handicapped man. He insulted John McCain, a prisoner of war, saying: “I like people who weren’t captured.” He directed sexist statements at Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. He had trouble disavowing David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. Minorities have been expelled from his rallies, sometimes roughly. His vile tone brings out the worst in his followers and drags down the level of discourse in this dispiriting campaign. Yet he’s winning state after state on his march to November.
The “conventional wisdom” says Trump can’t win the presidency. The same thinking was sure he couldn’t get this far. Now it’s too late for the GOP to rally around its most reasonable and experienced candidate, John Kasich, who hasn’t come close to winning a state. It’s too late to carry Rubio to victory. The Florida senator’s hope of becoming a strong “establishment” alternative has fizzled.
Only Cruz has an outside chance, if the anti-Trump faction can unite around a senator who has no backers in the Senate and won his home state primary in Texas with only 44 percent of the vote; Bernie Sanders swept Vermont with 86 percent.
Republicans face a choice: Whether to cave in to the Trumpslide or resist it out of principle. Leaders in primary states to come, such as North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory and Sen. Richard Burr, must decide. (Sen. Thom Tillis has endorsed Rubio.) Are they for or against Trump? It would require courage to defy Trump and his followers. McCrory said he is taking no one’s side in the primary but will support the Republican nominee in the general election. So he’s for Trump.
Republicans hate the thought of electing Democrat Hillary Clinton in November. They think she’ll continue the policies of President Barack Obama. Probably so. But, if they wanted to choose a credible alternative, their voters should have advanced Kasich or even Rubio.
This country doesn’t need a demagogue in the White House, one who is offensive in his conduct, hostile to minorities and disdainful of basic values. His promises are unrealistic, if not outright nonsense. He plays to fear, anger and hatred.
There may be no way to stop this Trumpslide, but North Carolina leaders — and voters — should not be swept along.
