Jonah Goldberg: Will the GOP finally do something about its Trump problem?
As the campaign goes on in earnest, here’s the question that needs to be asked. Can we expect it to do something about it? Well, there are plenty of reasons not to expect too much. For one thing, for an organization that has run such a sophisticated, media savvy, and disciplined campaign through four months of campaigning, the last thing that the GOP needs is to sink to the level of being just another left-wing interest group. In the long run it isn’t going to do anything, and in the short run, it’ll just keep running around the issue. So we should be looking for signs of the GOP going after the problem with a vengeance.
The problem of course is the President himself. What the nation needs now are actions that will have some degree of impact. The election was one where the results should have been beyond a partisan battle but instead were determined by the nature of the candidates and the issues that they faced. We know that the President won that election because of his own actions, not because of the actions of America’s elites. The Democratic Party still has to have the opportunity to try to regain the White House in 2016. The GOP should make it clear that they don’t want to be the party that takes it away. This is a chance to set up their party for another chance to be the party of business, not the party of a privileged class.
We all know that there’s a real difference between a President and a party. Yes, it’s possible that the Democrats will take the White House in 2016. But we need to remember that the Party has won two times in a row when the President has been a former Democrat who has flipped parties with virtually no opposition. It’s not necessarily going to be a Republican President who takes the White House in 2016, but if the Party can’t be successful, it can be replaced by the opposition party.
The GOP should be making a clear statement that it will not be the party that takes the White House in 2016. There is no need
