WarSclerotic

Too Late For GOP Moderates to Unite, Commentary Magazine, Jonathan S. Tobin, March 23, 2016

(Another member of the Trump Hater’s Club appears to concede defeat. — DM)

Image by © ERIK S. LESSER/epa/Corbis

Had anyone told you a couple of months ago that Jeb Bush would endorse Ted Cruz, you’d have said they were crazy. But that old cliché about politics and strange bedfellows is as true today as it ever was. Bush’s support for the Texas senator would have been a really big deal had it been announced at any point prior to Super Tuesday. But after Donald Trump’s impressive run of victories over the last several weeks that continued last night in Arizona, the grudging backing of the Bush clan for Cruz is a classic case of too little, too late.

Coming on a day after Trump issued a vile threat about “spilling the beans” about some dirt he would throw at Cruz’s wife Heidi, this might be considered a moment when Republicans of all political stripes might rally around the cause of stopping a candidate that seems bereft of a shred of common decency. Though some have expected Trump to start behaving like a future president now that the nomination is within his grasp, it is clearly too much to ask for him to act like anything other than a vulgar thug.

But given the fact that a host of other similar statements — all of which individually should be treated as disqualifying Trump for the presidency — the latest infamous Trumpism isn’t likely to shake his hold on the affections of a plurality of GOP voters. That’s why the Bush endorsement changes nothing about the race. The same can be said of the endorsement of the Club for Growth.It’s the first time the influential libertarian advocacy group has picked a favorite in a presidential race and would have been a big boost to Cruz earlier in the election cycle. But the Bush move and the willingness of GOP moderates like Senator Lindsey Graham to host a Washington fundraiser for the scourge of the Senate Republican caucus, these developments are meaningless when set beside Trump’s stunning ability to keep winning Republican primaries.

Cruz could take some solace in winning Utah by a landslide as Mormon voters registered their disgust with Trump’s vulgar style as well as his insults of Mitt Romney’s faith. But even though he managed to win all 40 Utah delegates, Trump’s sweep of all 58 delegates from Arizona puts him that much closer to the 1,237 he needs to secure the GOP nomination.

The next big test will come two weeks from now in Wisconsin but even if Cruz wins there — a big if considering that he will face competition from John Kasich for the anti-Trump vote — the rest of April will be filled with primaries in Northeastern states where both the Texan and the Ohio governor — whose lack of a rationale for staying in the race becomes more obvious with every passing day — may not be competitive. Though Cruz may keep fighting until California votes on June 7, his quest to deny Trump a majority and keep the hope of a contested convention alive may be done long before then.

But the Bush endorsement and the behind the scenes maneuvering that sought to also get Marco Rubio behind Cruz illustrates everything that was all wrong about the effort to stop Trump. According to Politico, some in the Cruz camp — including Utah Senator Mike Lee — reached out to Rubio about the possibility of a joint ticket. But Rubio wasn’t interested. Just as Bush wasn’t interested in backing his former friend after he dropped out when Rubio might have benefitted from that endorsement before the Florida primary.

Given that Bush was a total flop as a presidential candidate despite raising and spending record amounts of money, his endorsement doesn’t carry much weight with GOP primary voters. Nor is there any reason to believe that a Rubio endorsement of Cruz would change the electoral map. The so-called establishment lane for which Bush, Rubio, Kasich, and Chris Christie were all competing didn’t turn out to have as many votes as many of us thought. It’s obvious that GOP voters wanted an outsider — whether a complete outlier like Trump or a Tea Party rebel like Cruz — not someone that could be depicted as a successor to Republican moderates like Romney or John McCain.

But all this back and forth involving Bush’s hurt feelings toward Rubio and Rubio’s possible resentment of Cruz just shows how clueless mainstream Republicans have been about the 2016 campaign. It was clear to some of us as early as last August that the GOP primary schedule could allow Trump to romp to the nomination by winning pluralities while his rivals divided the vote of Republicans that wanted a more qualified candidate. Yet throughout the campaign, the so-called moderate wing of the party was too caught up in the egos of the individual candidates and their delusions about Trump fading to draw some obvious conclusions.

Had counter-factual scenarios that involve an early Bush endorsement of Rubio or Rubio and Bush backing Cruz before Super Tuesday come to pass that might have produced a different result than Trump’s current ascendancy. But what’s misleading about this thinking is that it ignores the strength of Trump’s appeal to a critical mass of voters who don’t care about his lack of knowledge about the issues, his substituting empty slogans for serious positions, his lack of a presidential temperament or the fact that he is clearly bereft of any sense of personal honor (I’ll concede that’s an antique concept in our day and age, but it is one that the signers of the Declaration of Independence took seriously).

The notion of Trump inevitability is a narrative that was probably only enabled by the fecklessness of his opponents. There might have been a moment in this campaign when the squabbling band of GOP moderates could have made peace with Cruz and joined forces in a manner that might have made a difference. Bush, Rubio, Kasich and other Republicans that didn’t want their party to be led by a thug to a disastrous November rout should have put aside their egos and joined forces weeks, if not months ago. But to expect a consolidation of his opponents to alter the direction of the contest now that Trump is clearly on track to win the nomination outright is to engage in wishful thinking. When Trump ascends the podium in Cleveland to accept his party’s nomination — an event that seems more likely than ever today — GOP leaders will have no one but themselves to blame.