I believe the peaceful transfer of power will prove more popular with Americans than Donald Trump. But we need to make sure of this, before we get on with the rest of the 2016 campaign. None of the issues facing the country takes precedence over the idea that the United States settles elections with the ballot, not the bullet. Trump’s campaign has descended into violence and it has to stop now.
The fun, if it ever was fun, with this guy is over. People are being slugged at speeches. Rallies are turning into riots. Donald Trump calls for violence directly from the podium at his events, over and over again. Trump encourages, and provides cover for, violent, dangerous, and indeed terroristic organizations that formerly festered on the fringes of our society.
Because of the profound damage Trump and his candidacy are doing to the Republican Party, Democrats will be strongly tempted to tolerate his presence on the national stage, or even to egg him on. He has done more in nine months to rip through the veneer of respectability covering up right-wing identity politics than decades of Democratic efforts. But it’s not worth it.
In West Virginia, it is both difficult and easy to say this. Difficult because elements of the Trump message have led him to very high popularity ratings here. Our state feels victimized and cheated by politics, and with good reason. But regardless of how well Trump plays on those emotions, he remains a moral catastrophe of a man, and at present, a threat to the nation as a whole. We cannot play along.
The United States of America is justly proud that for more than 200 years, longer than any other nation on Earth, we have transferred power peacefully and democratically, from one party to another. Trump frequently claims “we won’t have a country,” if he doesn’t get his way. We do have a country, and we’ll have one long after Trump goes back to reality TV.
Trump is showing us what elections fought in the streets look like. Foreign to us, such campaigns are common around the world. We’re not going to become a banana republic with some strongman leader who sends goons to opposition rallies. A man building his campaign on hatred for immigrants hates our country, no matter how much he has profited from it.
But Democrats cannot drive Trump off the Republican stage. Republicans have to do it. They have every reason to do it. Trump’s incitement of violence, his toxic persona, and his irredeemable character would be good enough reasons taken one at a time. Trump has handed the GOP all of them.
At the March 3rd debate, when Kasich, Cruz and Rubio again said they would support Trump as nominee, you could see the conflict within them. I believe that if one of them had found the courage to say “no,” he could have emerged as the true alternative and that votes would have shifted his way. That question searched for a leader, but didn’t find one.
The Republican Party itself must show it is capable of leadership. Trump should be expelled, immediately, from the GOP nominating contest. None of the other candidates need to debate him further — they are not required to do so and should never again appear with him, anywhere. The RNC rules committee should announce that his candidacy will not be considered at the Republican convention in Cleveland, period. It is within their power to do this.
Elected Republicans should line up behind the national organization to declare that the Republican Party will not abide a candidate who calls for violence against Americans. They should declare that just because naked appeals to racism, nativism and authoritarianism are protected by our First Amendment, does not mean a political party has to tolerate them. They must disavow Donald Trump without equivocation.
It’s not some courageous stand to take. Trump will destroy the Republican Party if he should become its candidate. He is destroying the party now, just by being considered. For the Republicans’ own sake, as well as everyone else’s, Trump’s major-party candidacy must end.
It’s a pivotal election this year. The Supreme Court may hang in the balance. Millions of families are in crisis. We need to get on with deciding how best to address our problems, and with choosing a leader who can help us do so.
But first things first: Trump has got to go.
Christopher J. Regan is the vice-chair of the West Virginia Democratic Party and an attorney at Bordas & Bordas, PLLC, in Wheeling. He blogs at www.HomeYesterday.com. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
