The prospect of Trump winning the Republican primary had been the
stuff of Washington jokes, whispered hallway conversations and
eye-rolls, even as he led in public opinion polls for months and
dominated debate after debate.
But with the brash billionaire now winning three straight contests
in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, denial is giving way
to a mostly gloomy acceptance that he may have too much momentum to
be stopped, especially if wins big in key Southern primaries next
week that look favorable to him.
"It fills all of us with concern and dread,” said Senator Jeff Flake
of Arizona, who has endorsed fellow Senator Marco Rubio of Florida,
considered the main hope of the Republican establishment to derail
Trump’s march to the nomination.
Trump has vowed to scrap U.S. trade deals, slap a tariff on imported
goods and raise taxes on hedge-fund managers, as well as retain some
sort of mandate to purchase health insurance - clashing with the
free-market principles that have long underpinned Republican
economic policy.
Some Republicans in Congress, such as Flake and Senator Lindsey
Graham of South Carolina, said a Trump nomination would do enormous
damage to the party and predicted a heavy election defeat in
November to the eventual Democratic nominee.
"I am like on the team that bought a ticket on the Titanic after we
saw the movie,” said Graham, contending that Trump would be
“slaughtered” in the general election.
In a Republican presidential debate in Houston on Thursday night,
another Trump rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, challenged him on
his electability, citing ties to Democratic front-runner Hillary
Clinton such as a donation to the Clinton Foundation.
Trump responded by ridiculing Cruz for his inability to win more
than the early voting state of Iowa and taunted him for being behind
the billionaire in opinion polls in Cruz's home state of Texas.
Said Trump, "If I can't beat her, you're really gonna get killed,
aren't you?"
Another Rubio supporter, Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida,
told Reuters he would not back Trump if he were the nominee. “If the
nominee is a fraud, and someone who’s offensive, and incapable of
being an effective president like Donald Trump, I won’t support
him,” Curbelo said.
Other Republicans tried to be more optimistic.
“I don’t think his nomination would be catastrophic,” said Senator
Susan Collins of Maine. She said she did not believe, as some
strategists fear, that having Trump on the ballot in November would
hurt Republican chances for holding onto control of the Senate,
where the party now has a 54-46 edge.
Conservative economist Arthur Laffer, an adviser to former President
Ronald Reagan who has been counseling Trump on tax policy, said he
was convinced the real estate mogul was open to sound advice.
Laffer recalled Trump telling him: "'Look, if you've got a better
idea than I've got, tell me, and I'll change.'"
Senator John Thune of South Dakota suggested Trump’s presence could
help by bringing more voters to the polls.
“There’s a lot of energy, a lot of intensity on our side,” Thune
said.
"REALLY FREAKED OUT"
Privately, lobbyists, economists, and analysts expressed deep
concern about having Trump, who has proposed building a wall along
the southern U.S. border and banning Muslims from the country, as
the face of the party.
“There are a lot of people who are really freaked out," said Douglas
Holtz-Eakin, who was the chief economic policy advisor to 2008
Republican presidential candidate John McCain. "He seems to be
winging it."
[to top of second column] |
Conservative policy-makers worry that Trump's pitch to voters is
based on his management skills rather than conservative principles.
Juleanna Glover, a prominent Republican communications consultant,
told Reuters that Trump's ascent "spells the death of the party's
sentient and cohesive governing framework."
Two Republican business lobbyists, who also asked to remain
unidentified, told Reuters that they are very concerned about Trump,
chiefly because they do not know what he stands for.
They said they have no sense of certainty because Trump’s positions
on issues such as tax, trade, and regulation range from being only
vaguely understood to completely unknown.
By vowing to make America "win" again abroad while going into little
detail on his foreign policy plans, Trump is also stirring concern
in Washington national security circles.
A high-ranking official at a conservative think-tank, who spoke on
condition of anonymity because his job requires him to steer clear
of partisan politics, said: “Every serious student of American
strategy is sick to their stomach about the possibility of Trump
being the Republican nominee."
Robert Kagan, a conservative foreign relations expert at the
Brookings Institution think tank, said in a column for the
Washington Post on Thursday that he would vote for Clinton rather
than Trump.
"The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be,” he wrote.
Paul Ryan, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a
leading voice on conservative economic policy, was asked Thursday
whether he could work with someone like Trump if he became the
nominee.
“We’ll cross these bridges when we get to it,” Ryan said. “But I do
believe that we will be able to unify as a party."
Asked about the hand-wringing in the Republican establishment about
Trump, his campaign manger, Corey Lewandowski, said, "Look, we’ve
got relationships with those guys and we talk to them all the time.
"But I think what you find is that, you know, politics as usual in
Washington, D.C., is not something that the American people want,"
he said. Lewandowski added that voters "sent a very clear message"
in the three early voting states where Trump won nominating contests
"that they want someone who is going to make fundamental change.”
Asked if Trump's campaign would work harder to win establishment
endorsements as he got closer to the nomination, Lewandowski pointed
to former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, an early establishment favorite
who quit the race on Saturday.
"If endorsements mattered," he said, "Jeb Bush would be the
nominee."
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell, Richard Cowan, Kevin Drawbaugh, Jason
Lange, Arshad Mohammed, David Morgan, James Oliphant, Matt
Spetalnick and Emily Stephenson; Writing by James Oliphant; Editing
by Stuart Grudgings)
[© 2016 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2016 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|