For the GOP, this week was the moment when they realized that the USS Trump-tanic really is going to sink, straight to the bottom of the ocean.
And the moment when they realize that there aren’t enough lifeboats?
That’s still to come. And it’s not going to be pretty.
Take a look around you in Georgia. I’ve long been skeptical about the biennial claims from Democrats that this was going to be the year that they would make Georgia competitive, but I have a confession: I’m beginning to have doubts about my doubts. And it’s not just the polls, which show Hillary Clinton competitive with Donald Trump in Georgia and in some cases leading. After all, we’ve seen similar polls at this point in the process before, but by November it’s always been a different story.
Yet something feels odd this time. The prospect of a presidential race against the hated Hillary ought to have the entire state GOP at a fever pitch of excitement, but I’m not seeing it, not to the usual scale. To the contrary, I’m seeing disenchantment and discouragement, particularly in the Atlanta suburbs that have long been the Georgia GOP’s reservoir of votes, money and fervor.
That gut sense got me curious, so I went to AJC poll numbers to see if they would bolster or contradict my thesis. In our last poll in October 2012 — a poll that got the overall final margin exactly right — President Obama had a 31-point lead over Mitt Romney in metro Atlanta. In our August 2016 poll, Clinton has a 50-point lead over Trump in that same geographic region. That 19-point differential cannot be explained as increased minority support for Clinton. Those are moderate white voters turning against Trump.
Still, maybe my gut-level reading is wrong; or maybe it’s right, but the numbers are still so daunting for Democrats that come November it won’t matter. At best, I’m thinking that the odds of a Clinton victory here are now 50-50. But this is Georgia, so even that is saying something.
I’m also trying to puzzle through what happens to the GOP after this election cycle is over. To re-form the Republican Party, simple arithmetic says that the party establishment would need to keep the Trump base loyal if it’s to have any hope of getting the GOP near a national majority. The problem is, they would also need that base the way it used to be — quiet, subservient and easily placated, and those days are gone forever. Through Drudge, Breitbart, talk radio and Fox News, that part of the base has gone rogue with its own leaders, information sources, ideologies and obsessions.
That leaves the GOP establishment with three choices:
— They can let the Trump base remain in control of the party, which means it will continue to produce Trump-like candidates for high office, which will continue to produce Trump-like results.
— They can try to regain control of the party and make it more responsible and capable of governance, while somehow keeping the Trump base loyal. But again, the days in which the Trump base was willing to play the junior, silent partner in that arrangement are over. I don’t think that approach is realistic.
— The GOP establishment, particularly outside the South, can itself leave the Republican Party to form a more moderate, mainstream party, thus reducing the Republican Party to a regional organization. That’s my best bet as of today.
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