The emergence Friday of the disgusting Trump tape was a gift to the Republican party. It provided an occasion, at the very last minute, for the party to dump a fundamentally unworthy and radically unfit nominee. At the very least it provided an occasion for the party to separate itself radically from that nominee.
But it’s always easier to find excuses for inaction than to mobilize to take bold and difficult action. Sunday night’s debate may prove an excuse for inaction. If so, it will mark an important station on the road to disaster.
Here’s the problem: Some Republican leaders could well make the mistake of thinking that because Donald Trump wasn’t destroyed at the debate, there isn’t now a dire need to act. They could decide that because Trump didn’t dissolve into a puddle in the center of the town hall, the situation has stabilized, and the status quo is sustainable. That would be a fatal mistake. Hillary Clinton failed to do the GOP the favor of landing a knockout blow on Donald Trump Sunday night. But he is nonetheless on a path to defeat, a resounding defeat that will do great damage to the Republican party.
Some Republicans are saying Trump stopped the bleeding. Maybe. For now. But the patient remains on a downward trajectory, and it’s a misdiagnosis to think he can recover. And the only hope for that other and more important patient, the Republican party, is a surgery to remove Trump. But GOP leaders could well embrace the misdiagnosis that nothing radical needs be done. If they do, Trump will lose—and as things turn south again in the next days and weeks, so too will Republicans lose the Senate and perhaps the House, and many of their hopes for the future.
The Declaration of Independence identified the problem: “All experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” Republicans may be disposed to suffer, rather than take bold action, contrary to the forms to which they are accustomed, to shove Trump aside. Republican leaders may think, or hope, that Trump is a sufferable evil. They will be cruelly disappointed in that judgment.
Or will some key GOP leaders—such as Paul Ryan, or Mike Pence—see further than their contemporaries, and act boldly?
