If the acceptance of Donald Trump by the Republican Party is happening slowly, the acceptance by Trump of the Republican Party seems to be going less well.
Nothing suggest he wants much to do with it, as Dan Balz has written, nothing suggests he understands the duties associated with leading a party, and nothing suggests he feels a duty to bring the dissenters along. Instead, he went to New Mexico to launch an assault on Susana Martinez, and then attacked Nikki Haley, (another popular female minority governor), mocked Jeb Bush, and blasted Mitt Romney, saying he was “stupid … walked like a penguin [and] choked like a dog.”
He also found time to remind us that Ted Cruz is a liar whose father conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald, in case we had forgotten that strange little story. None of this was provoked, except by Martinez’ refusal to attend the Trump rally, and the fact that all the aforementioned people have yet to endorse him. “Trump claimed she hadn’t done enough to help her state’s economy,” Balz tells us. “Her true sin is not treating Trump with the respect he expects.” Is this how he expects to unite a great party? And to make those not there toe the line?
Trump has had many careers in his life, but that of national candidate, head of party, and chief of a vast, complex enterprise was not one of them, and it’s one he does not seem to fit. A political party is a sensitive being, a mutable thing with a life of its own, filled with moving parts that shift often, with people who agree but not always, who are friends and are rivals, who may have small but sharp disagreements, and can come together on many big things.
There are many independent sources of power, leaders of states or movements or factions, who cannot be controlled by a central authority. Trump could fire contestants and flacks, he could bury primary foes under volleys of insults. But there’s not much he can do to Susana Martinez, a popular two-term governor not facing election, with a great deal of clout in the Republican Party, and a broad power base of her own.
He can make Paul Ryan’s life hell in his position as speaker of the House, but he can’t touch him at home, where Ryan’s approval ratings approach stratospheric. He can’t do a thing now to Bush and Romney, who are rich and retired. And he certainly can’t touch Judge Gonzalo Curiel, the sitting judge on the case brought against Trump University by many ex-students who claim that they were defrauded, and who sought the release of pertinent documents that Trump had tried hard to withhold.
After a series of rants unleashed on mere politicians, Trump turned on the judge, called him a “disgrace,” a “hater,” (three times in one sentence), a crook and a “Mexican,” which he is not. The judge’s response was to open the documents, as one of a growing number of people Trump has failed to pound into submission (or “unity.”) And who doesn’t want unity now?
Not Trump, who the Washington Post says went on a “grudge tour” last week, ripping a random assortment of people, along with the brightest and best. “The attack on [Martinez] stunned many Republicans, who are not accustomed to a nominee who will throw one of their own to an angry mob,” the paper reported. “The respect he expects” grows more and more distant. And he never may get it at all.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
