Over the past week we have finally seen the emergence of a candidate who can do what 16 Republican presidential contenders could not: defeat Donald Trump.
Not necessarily Hillary Clinton, although she is formidable and made history Tuesday night. Not necessarily a third-party spoiler, though there could be still one.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich identified Trump’s Achilles heel: “The person who’s most likely to beat Donald Trump is Donald Trump.”
That Trump has been on display ever since he decided to ignore a half dozen issues on which Clinton is vulnerable and instead engage against the federal judge handling his Trump University case.
Trump could have avoided bringing up Gonzalo Curiel or his Mexican heritage. If he absolutely could not resist, there were ethnically neutral political arguments he could have raised concerning Curiel’s membership in an organization boycotting his businesses.
Instead it took Trump several days to even clarify that he was questioning whether one specific judge was biased against him, not whether all judges of Mexican ancestry are inherently incapable of impartiality.
Yet the latter is now the conventional wisdom, much like widely held belief Trump said all Mexicans are rapists. It wasn’t until hours before the polls closed in the last batch of Republican primaries that Trump issued a statement denying his Curiel crusade was a “categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage.”
At this point, can a candidate with his approval ratings among Hispanics even afford a targeted attack?
We have been down this road before. Whenever Trump has been in a good position, he has said or done something self-destructive.
After falling behind Ted Cruz in Iowa, Trump appeared to be regaining his lead as the caucuses approached. He skipped the last Iowa debate in a fit of personal pique against Fox News and skimped on his ground game, while Cruz’s organizational advantage would repeat itself several times during the Republican presidential race.
Imagine if instead of losing Iowa, Trump had swept the first four states that voted on the GOP side this year. Maybe that would have eliminated Cruz and given Marco Rubio the clean shot at Trump the Floridian’s supporters had envisioned. It’s just as likely it would have finished the race earlier.
Trump had another opportunity to consolidate Republican support after knocking Rubio out of the race in the Florida primary. The party establishment was never going to fully embrace Cruz. John Kasich was never going to win outside Ohio.
Rather than capitalize, Trump slipped on one banana peel after another, culminating in his ugly dust-up over Heidi Cruz. He then promptly lost the Wisconsin primary and experienced a slew of widely publicized setbacks in the state-by-state delegate hunt.
None of that mattered in the long run. Trump had nine political lives. His opponents were simply not on his level.
But nine lives isn’t an infinite number of lives. Trump now must contend against a much wider array of political foes than the listless Republican presidential field while trying to appeal to segments of the electorate who trust the mainstream media more than GOP primary voters do.
That’s a tall order, especially since the Curiel debacle has revealed he is pretty much going to have to do it on his own. Trump may be the presumptive Republican nominee, but whenever he gets himself into serious trouble the rest of the party is going to run for the hills.
Scarcely a single prominent Republican came to his aid, not even Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. Reluctant endorsers like House Speaker Paul Ryan didn’t put out the first. They poured gasoline on it.
Most Republican elected officials never wanted Trump. Neither did most conservative pundits. There are still a number of anti-Trump Republicans looking for, in Lindsey Graham’s words, an “exit ramp,” whether it comes in the form of a newly contested convention, an independent candidate or just being able to rescind their personal endorsements.
Nevertheless, Trump was the choice of Republican voters. That fact isn’t lost on GOP leaders like Ryan, however much they wish it were otherwise. That’s why a convention revolt against a candidate with more than 1,500 delegates and over 13 million votes — that’s a lead of 983 delegates and 5.7 million votes over runner-up Cruz — is so implausible.
Even if you point to the high percentage of Republicans who picked candidates other than Trump or the low share of registered Republicans who turned out, any alternative would necessarily have gotten a lower share of these numbers or no votes at all. What democratic legitimacy would they have?
As for giving delegates come kind of conscience clause to refuse to vote for Trump on the first ballot, nearly all his flaws were readily apparent before the primary process began. Maybe rank-and-file Republicans will begin to feel buyer’s remorse in the next month, but there’s reason to doubt it.
Clinton is hoping the wider electorate will be pickier customers. In addition to her potential as the first woman president and her promise to have the government protect Democratic voting blocs, she is running on the hope people will simply get tired of Trump’s drama. She seems to know how to get under his skin. And she is betting he is the one candidate the voters will get sick of before her.
Trump can fix his campaign’s problems. He’s overcome them before. But he’s going to have to do it on his own, without much outside assistance from other Republican leaders.
As any businessman knows, it’s hard to get good help these days.
