Branding the Elephant

“I think he’s a wrecking ball for the future of the Republican Party,” said Lindsey Graham of Donald Trump. Republican operatives alternatively have called Donald Trump, still surging in the polls, a “complete moron” and a “faux Republican.”

A few 2016 GOP Senate candidates have said they’d give any donation Trump made to their campaigns to charity.

Words like “toxic” follow Trump’s name in Washington’s GOP power circles.

Fretting about damage to the party’s image — or his frontrunner status — Jeb Bush said Trump’s “not a constructive force” and “outside the mainstream.”

Yet if the “GOP brand” is a real concern for Republican “leaders,” they must first engage in a serious review of their own track record since taking the majority in Congress last November. With impressive wins in Senate races across America, Republicans had a golden opportunity to halt the Obama agenda on a number of critical issues — Obamacare, executive amnesty, to name just a few.

Instead, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky didn’t block Obama. They blocked the conservatives. Rather than defunding executive amnesty, they buckled and announced they would let the courts handle the issue.

Worse than that, with a record number of Americans outside the workforce, pols such as Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan support a huge expansion in foreign workers.

On Obamacare, they also (falsely) hoped the Supreme Court would come to the rescue and did nothing. And the same Republicans who are railing against the Obama administration’s handling of the Iranian nuclear negotiations squandered vast political capital to hand Obama enhanced trade negotiating authority.

I’ve never seen a Congress so hell-bent on reducing its own power, and influence, by ceding its constitutional authority to a president of the opposing political party.

For a sense of how grassroots Republicans feel about all this, check out the comments section on any piece written over the past few months that showcases Paul Ryan’s defense of TPA, or Trade Promotion Authority. Or Boehner’s pronouncements that “immigration reform” is a top priority. Most comments express one or all of the three D’s — disappointment, disengagement, disgust.

In 2014, Republicans running for the House and Senate didn’t campaign on giving President Obama a huge legislative win on trade. Most promised to stop Obama’s agenda in its tracks. We were promised a flurry of bills that would arrive on Obama’s desk, forcing his hand. We assumed they would use the power of the purse wisely to defund specific Obama initiatives that voters adamantly oppose.

None of it happened. Instead, McConnell bent over backwards to assure Obama and Democrats there would be no government shutdowns over policy.

Obama is wrong on most issues, but he is not stupid. He knows that when conservatives are stymied by their own party — when the GOP stops playing offense — he wins every time. He now has an open lane to take the ball to the basket. Their job is to box-out the conservative players who try to steal the ball.

So why is the GOP brand in such lousy shape? They suit up for one team, and end up playing for the other. They serve the interests of the donor class at the expense of the working class.

Democrat pollster Pat Caddell’s recent comments on my radio show were spot on.

“You have a country that is entirely disrespected …. [T]he only thing [congressional Republicans] have done is give Obama a victory on trade because chambers of commerce pull their strings,” he said.

They thought they could play the Republicans for fools — again.

Enter Donald Trump. He announced his candidacy June 15 in celebrity-style with a free-wheeling attack on Washington’s failures on illegal immigration, trade, China and job creation. It stung and startled all the right people. His presence in the race and surge in popularity isn’t causing dissatisfaction with the Republican Party. It’s a response to it.

A month before Trump jumped in, Gallup reported the GOP approval rating was stuck at a dismal 19 percent. Similar findings from Pew Research found that just 23 percent of Americans said congressional Republicans were keeping their promises. That’s Trump’s fault? Is he then also the reason more Americans today identify themselves as Democrat than Republican? Laughable.

If Republican leaders — including those in BushWorld — want to blame someone for the tarnished image of the GOP, they should proceed to the nearest mirror. Or in 2016, the voters may tell them, “You’re fired.”
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