01 October 2015
Speaker Cornered – the latest twist in the fight for the Republican Nomination
by J.R.Thomas
How the commentators all laughed at the idea that Donald Trump could possibly take his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination seriously, let alone that anybody else would. Light entertainment, they all said. A monstrous ego, having its four-yearly outing. A warm-up for the main event when Jeb Bush will appear, a successful governor of Florida, a Bush for our times, to be cheered by the masses; and onwards to acclamation and coronation at Cleveland next summer. And then a Bush/Clinton contest for the fall.
That is looking increasingly unlikely. Mrs Clinton continues to struggle to capture hearts or minds on the blue side of the beach; and on the red side, the plethora of eager Republicans continue to tussle and bicker; Bush, Rubio, Carson, Fiorina, rising and falling like little waves on the shore. Meanwhile, out at sea, grows the gathering swell of Mr Trump, ready to crash magnificently onto the beach and sweep every familiar feature away.
Mr Trump, it should be recalled, is one of sixteen contenders to represent the “Grand Old Party” (Scott Walker having withdrawn on funding grounds). His position in the polls is around 24% to 28%, with each of the other fifteen struggling to attempt to emerge as a clear challenger. Mr Bush has been up to 13%, Mr Carson up to 23% (that was before he started talking about policy and religion, which has done his ratings no good at all). The rising star is Ms Fiorina who has a pleasing feistiness and willingness to think out loud. But until some of the candidates withdraw, whether as a result of backroom deals promising cabinet or ambassadorial roles, or because the money runs out, nobody seems likely to build up a big enough base to challenge The Donald.
Mr Trump knows this; and he knows that at some point he will face a much smaller field, and that an anti-Trump candidate will start to build momentum. Whether or not he originally thought that his candidature might conceivably succeed, he is taking it seriously now, and the gaffes have receded, the wisecracks moderated, the policy pronouncements have become much more considered. His latest statement is on tax policy, and stresses that he will lower the tax burden on the middle classes, whilst making sure that the super-rich and Wall Street bear their proper share. Under his proposals, around fifty million Americans would pay no Federal taxes at all. This is not quite as dramatic as it sounds – some forty three million don’t at the moment – but, when coupled with promises to close the gaps in the system through which the very rich can slip to pay very little income tax at all and to cut corporate taxes to encourage American corporations to bring their overseas profits back on shore, it sounds sensible and feasible. It is also good populist stuff of course and enables Mr T to go on positioning himself as the peoples’ hero in a generally Corbynite way, whilst not compromising his rightist and generally all- American capitalist approach.
Meanwhile, the party whose standard he is so anxious to seize continues to in-fight to a remarkable extent. The latest flaring of the bitterness which seems to pervade the GOP is the sudden resignation of the Speaker, leader of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, one of the most senior (and respected) Republicans in Washington, and second in line to the Presidency between elections. Boehner seems to have been forced out as the right wing of the Republicans rose in ideological purity against his tendencies to compromise and negotiate, and against his liberal views on many social issues – particularly abortion, immigration, and same sex marriage. Certainly, that was Boehmer’s interpretation, his resignation speech a bitter, by his standards, attack on the forces bearing down on him from the right, criticizing what he called “false prophet” politicians who promise things that they cannot possibly deliver. Even if most voters think that that is probably just part of a politician’s job, it has certainly been seen as a dig at the right of the ex-Speaker’s own party and Tea Party elements, more rapier-like from having come from one who is regarded as a gentle and courteous moderate.
Now the heat is on Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican leader in the Senate, and a similar character to Boehner, with not dissimilar views and a tendency to want to broker deals. If the right succeeds in forcing him out too, it might be a victory for the Tea Party tendency, but it will make the party look increasingly ideologically driven.
Most political parties in democracies are of course coalitions of some sort, groups of people of vaguely (sometimes very vaguely) aligned values and beliefs, whose dislike for each other is outweighed by a greater dislike for the other lot. The USA, more than most democracies, is a prime example of this coalitionist approach, and both Democrat and Republican Parties are very broad spectrums of opinion. But from time to time the disparate groups which make up the parties seem to be more eager to do each other down than to win elections. It is happening to Labour in the UK and, for some time, the Republicans have been suffering from it as well. That in part reflects the slightly odd system whereby the parties, when not occupying the White House, usually have no high-profile national leader. Leaders get chosen for each Presidential contest in the gladiatorial way now being undertaken. If they fail, then the loser is thrown overboard and the party sails on, effectively rudderless, until the time comes to have another go. This is why Mr Trump, a man of no previous strong political affiliations, and certainly with no time for the usual grinding routine of being nice to party workers and building long term allegiances and favours, can suddenly appear with a reasonable chance of becoming President. Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower were also candidates who came from practically no political background or allegiance, who had held no previous political office, and whose first serious political role was to be President. It is not a bad system in many ways – it remains true that anybody can emerge to become President, but it does mean that the parties lack the glue that a national leader might provide whilst out of office.
At the moment, of course, the GOP has control of both the House and the Senate even whilst conducting a long term and unresolved debate as to exactly what it might believe in in the early twenty first century, or what policies might flow from such beliefs. From mid western farmers to Wall Street bankers, from Christian Fundamentalists to cultists in Montana, from Confederalist aching hearts in South Carolina to the descendants of the founding fathers in Rhode Island, from the Tea Party to the Libertarian Party, they all shelter under the GOP umbrella. And when it comes to fighting elections, the voters tend to vote against those they don’t want rather than for those they do, so maybe it all barely matters.
But the one time it might well matter is in a Presidential election. The ideological differences between Mrs Clinton, Mr Sanders and Mr Biden, if he runs, are not great. But the Republicans have a candidate for whatever your box of opinions might be. Those sixteen have to be whittled down to one by next July. If it is (it won’t be, but for example) Rand Paul for the libertarian wing of the party, will Marc Rubio of the liberal wing really campaign for him, endorse him? Would the outsider Mr Carson throw his north eastern big city supporters behind the patrician Latino-Floridian, Mr Bush?
What the party needs to move toward is a winner, a winner who can unite the party on a common and agreed platform where everybody feels they will get something and not lose too much, where all voices will be heard and respected. Maybe Ms Fiorina is the natural choice; centrist, modernist but not frighteningly so, a woman at a time when the time has come for a female President, an outsider at a time when people reject the old politics and politicians, from no faction, a unifying healing force. But then, maybe so is Mr Trump. Could The Donald, newly moderate and thoughtful, also become the Great Unifier of the GOP?
