Republican Party imploding over Trump’s US presidential candidacy
Donald Trump’s US presidential candidacy is imploding the Republican Party from within and many party leaders have vowed never to back the GOP frontrunner who they describe as a divisive demagogue.
Trump’s racist and anti-Muslim statements have caused the GOP to become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party presidential nomination or even until the November presidential elections.
As the campaign-trail rhetoric grew toxic over the weekend, a sense of fatalism fell over the Republican establishment, from elected officials and leaders to major donors and strategists.
Kevin Madden, a veteran operative who advised 2012 nominee Mitt Romney, told the Washington Post he could never vote for Trump. “I’m prepared to write somebody in so that I have a clear conscience,” he said.
More splintering came late Sunday when Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who has been a vocal Trump critic, declared that if the reality TV star is nominated, he will “look for some 3rd candidate — a conservative option, a Constitutionalist.”
On Sunday, Trump declined repeatedly in a CNN interview to repudiate the endorsement of him by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), a right wing extremist organization that advocates white supremacy and terrorism against non-whites.
Meg Whitman, Hewlett Packard’s chief executive and former political candidate, on Sunday called Trump “a dishonest demagogue” who would “take America on a dangerous journey.”
Whitman also criticized New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's endorsement of Trump as "an astonishing display of political opportunism" and called on other Christie donors to reject Trump.
Christie, who was a candidate for president himself, told American voters on Friday that no one is better prepared to lead the country than Trump.
This is not how Republican officials imagined their party would be entering the spring of 2016. They had wanted to unite around a nominee with an inclusive and broadly appealing message and begin prosecuting the case against Democratic presidential rivals.
Instead, they are wondering anew whether mainstream voters could accept Trump as the nominee.
“It’s scary,” South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “I think what he’ll do to the Republican Party is really make us question who we are and what we’re about. And that’s something we don’t want to see happen.”
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