Conservative Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan says Donald Trump will force the Republican Party to either collapse or evolve, but admitted she doesn’t yet understand the candidate who has taken the lead in the GOP primary contest.
“Is Donald Trump just a nut carried along by forces he himself doesn’t understand?” Noonan wrote. “Or is he something more than that, and more confounding?”
But at the same time, Noonan acknowledged something Trump has been saying in recent media interviews and campaign rallies: He’s expanding the party.
“Mr. Trump is bringing Democrats in. They don’t want to be Democrats anymore, or continue their role as members of always-Democratic families, and they don’t want to vote for Hillary,” she wrote. “They’re considering coming fully into the GOP tent. But their presence in the tent, with Mr. Trump as ringmaster means — if the party holds — the GOP transmogrifies into some wholly new jumble of political impulses. Some new issue sets, some new stands that imply a wholly new approach to what conservatism means and is.”
