The last major rebel in the Republican Party has message for his team about Donald Trump: “A Stop-Trump movement will be self-defeating because Trump isn’t going away.”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said in an email to supporters that Trump, and the success of Sen. Ted Cruz and even outsider Ben Carson, is a sign that most GOP voters are turning their backs on the old guard establishment.
“The Republican old order still hasn’t come to grips with the fact that two out of three of their own voters are repudiating them. This isn’t about Trump the personality. It is about Trump, Cruz, Carson and the genuine grassroots revulsion against a political class that has failed to solve America’s problems,” wrote the former House GOP “back-bencher,” now one of the party’s most influential leaders.
His note about the GOP race is below:
The Republican Race
After Nevada can we stipulate that Trump is the frontrunner?
As importantly, can we also acknowledge that the Trump-Cruz-Carson outsider vote is in the 62-70% range?
The old elites have to come to grips with the fact that their “mainstream” champion of last resort was in 2010 a Tea Party insurgent fighting the Washington establishment to win a Senate seat.
Marco Rubio is the most conservative candidate the political and donor classes have ever supported. He is also much more independent. (There is a sound reason so much of the old order donated to Jeb Bush and not to Marco Rubio.)
The anti-Trump advocates keep hoping that as the field narrows, all the votes will go to the anti-Trump candidate. There is no reason to believe that is true. With each candidate who drops out, Trump gains some of their support. If Cruz and Carson dropped out he would gain more of their supporters than Rubio would.
There is an additional challenge coming for Rubio: Can he beat Trump in Florida?
If Rubio loses Florida, he will lose any rationale for his candidacy.
Cruz seems better positioned to win Texas, a victory that would boost his overall delegate count.
Three Big Points
1. In every state we know about, the GOP turnout is up and the Democrat turnout is down. That is a bad sign for the Democrats.
2. The Republican old order still hasn’t come to grips with the fact that two out of three of their own voters are repudiating them. This isn’t about Trump the personality. It is about Trump, Cruz, Carson and the genuine grassroots revulsion against a political class that has failed to solve America’s problems.
3. A Stop-Trump movement will be self-defeating because Trump isn’t going away. When Andrew Jackson was blocked by the old-order from becoming president in 1824, he spent four years assailing them and creating the Jacksonian movement which transformed the Democratic Party. The idea that Trump could win almost everywhere (he is currently behind only in Utah and Texas–and even in Texas he’s close) and then be denied the nomination is hopeless. Either Trump will be stopped in the primaries or he will be the nominee.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
