“On Tuesday in Virginia, a 55 percent majority of Republican voters said they would be dissatisfied with Trump becoming the party’s nominee, but they did not rally behind any of his challengers,” wrote the Washington Post on March 2. “By contrast, 59 percent said they would be satisfied with Rubio … But among those who would be happy with Rubio, he won just about half.”
Meanwhile, the front-runner, described by some as a wholly unstoppable juggernaut, has managed to win most of the earlier contests, with an average of 34 percent of the vote. This race, with a solid, almost fanatical core of support around a minority candidate who too often wins against a divided majority unable to pick from a number of choices, has been puzzling many who seek a grand cause for its epic dysfunction. But to The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan Last, it’s a case of bad luck, of random chance incidents that impact each other for maximum damage. He starts with three, we add three others, and come up with something like this:
First, for the first time in memory Republicans had no clear heir apparent, no next in line or runner-up-last-time, such as Ronald Reagan was in 1980, George H. W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1996, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. In 2000, Gov. George W. Bush was his fellow governors’ unified favorite, but in 2016 the last two runners-up were ruled out at the start as too eccentric to nominate, depriving the race of a much-needed center of gravity.
Second was the very large field of 17 entrants, most of them able politicians but many elected in 2010 or later, thus being untested and short on experience. Third was Jeb Bush, a surprise and an unwelcome legacy candidate who was lacking a base beyond his own family, but was lavishly funded by family backers. “The donor fealty deprived other would-be front-runners of resources and armed one of the least viable candidates with an enormous financial weapon,” Last tells us. “Bush and his affiliates then chose to use this Death Star not to target Trump,” but his protegee, Marco Rubio, with whom he was feuding. At the same time, Bush provided Trump with an irresistible foil, which Trump used to fuel his campaign.
Fourth, the candidates sorted themselves into “lanes,” in which the establishment lane spent its time ripping itself into ribbons, and ignored Donald Trump, who was the front-runner. In the “outsider” lane, Cruz ignored Trump when he wasn’t enabling him, hoping Trump would fade on his own and will him his supporters. As a result, until very recently, no one attacked Trump at all.
Fifth, when the lanes finally cleared, Cruz and Rubio seemed much too well-paired: Young, bright, children of immigrants, and too closely matched to assert dominance. Cruz now leads, but from now on the map is not in his favor, and things can change quickly. The Gang of Eight is a drag upon Rubio, but Cruz’s campaign has been based upon narrow-casting — he appeals to “conservatives” much less than “Republicans,” and has gone out of his way enrage many colleagues, which puts his outreach potential in doubt.
And sixth, the “reforms” the party put in place that would have helped Romney, the serious one in a field of eccentrics, are now helping Trump, the single eccentric in a field of more serious people — a perfect example of solving past problems by tying the future in knots.
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.”
