Donald Trump sinks in racism
M. Serajul Islam from Maryland, USA | Tuesday, 14 June 2016
The two parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, both now have their presumptive nominees for the November 08 presidential election weeks ahead of their respective national conventions. Even recently, there were serious speculations in the media that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton would have to fight until their respective convention to become their respective party's candidate.
President Obama appeared on MSNBC TV's popular Tonight Show after Hillary Clinton won the June 07 California primary and became the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party. The interviewer Jimmy Fallon asked the President whether the Republicans were happy to have chosen Donald Trump as their candidate. The President answered spontaneously that he did not know about the Republicans but that he was certain that the Democrats were indeed happy much to the cheer of the audience that was present in the TV station watching the interview live. The President was no doubt underlining the feeling in the Hillary Clinton camp that with the type of problems Donald Trump's candidature is stuck where his own party leaders have called him "racist" after his attack on Judge Gonzalo Curiel for his Mexican heritage, it would be easy sailing for the former Secretary of State.
The President thereafter paused. He then expressed views that underlined why he is, the inexplicable hatred of his opposition to him notwithstanding, a great president and perhaps the best that the country has seen for a long time of issues of morals and their importance in politics. He said that the America is a great and democratic country for a variety of reasons among which the way the country has based its politics on the two-party system is a very important one. He said that the Democrats have been left of centre while the Republicans, right of the centre and from those positions they for generations differed fiercely on principles, argued strongly on issues but in the end came together on what was important for the country.
He thought that Donald Trump's candidature has been breaking that two-party system and endangering the welfare of the country. He hoped that somewhere down the race for the White House, the Republican Party would come together or that Donald Trump would change his style so that the two-party system he has been destroying would be saved and the country's democratic stability and future assured. The President's thoughts on the two-party system underlined the spirit of bipartisanship that has figured ahead of party interests in the way he ran the country in his two terms as the President. It also underlined, notwithstanding the casual way he stated it, that with an unreformed Donald Trump and a Republican Party unable to reform him, Hillary Clinton would have no serious contest for the White House.
The President could be right because Donald Trump's candidature is now sinking over his fight with Judge Curiel who is investigating fraud in the activities of the Trump University. The Republican Party establishment widely condemned the remark. House Speaker Paul Ryan said that Donald Trump's comment on the Judge was "textbook definition of a racist comment." The hue and cry from the Republican establishment failed to have any effect on Donald Trump who has remained unrepentant. Outside the party, very few had any doubt about Donald Trump as a racist from his repeated remarks on Muslims, blacks, Latino-Hispanics and immigrants. With the Republican Party establishment itself now accepting the dangerously damaging view, it is not difficult to understand why there was a smile on the President's face when he answered Jimmy Fallon's question.
In fact, some Republicans are jumping the Republican ship now that the candidature of Donald Trump is a reality. In the 1/3rd Senate seats that would be contested on November 08, there are quite a few where the Republican candidates are facing tough contests. For these Republicans, the racial nature of Donald Trump's campaign against the minorities, particularly the Latino-Hispanic, has become a nightmare. As a consequence, some of these Republicans are distancing themselves from Donald Trump by "un-endorsing" their earlier endorsements for him. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois withdrew his endorsement with the following statement: "After much consideration, I have concluded that Donald Trump has not demonstrated the temperament necessary to assume the greatest office in the world." David Johnson, a state senator in Iowa, left the Reublican Party altogether with the statement that he "would not stand silent if the party of Lincoln and the end of slavery buckles under the racial bias of a bigot."
At this stage, it appears like Donald Trump has bitten more than he can chew with his racial and religious bigotry. Now it is not only the rest of the country outside the Republican Party that is jittery with him and his candidature; within the party that feeling has now becoming widespread. In fact, with the anger on Donald Trump over his ill-advised comments on Judge Curiel now inflamed over his refusal to apologise, the Republican Party leadership is now seriously considering the alternative to nominating him as the candidate. That would of course be difficult because Donald Trump has already collected, democratically, the required number of delegates to take the Republican nomination in the party's convention in Cleveland, Ohio from July 18-21.
Donald Trump has also totally confused the Republican Party leaders. This has been amply underlined by Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell in a new Bloomberg Politics podcast recently. In that, the Senator said that Donald Trump "needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it's pretty obvious he doesn't know a lot about the issues." The Senator said he had reached that conclusion after watching him "in the debates in which he had participated." He disagreed with everything Donald Trump has said on the campaign trail and that he "vehemently objected" to his attacks on various ethnic groups. The Senator felt that the problem with Donald Trump thus far has been the fact that he did not speak publicly from the script and that once in the White House "he'll have to respond to the right-of-centre world which elected him, and the things that we believe in."
The Senator, however, had nothing to state how Donald Trump would be encouraged to follow the script. He also did not explain how the damage that Donald Trump's public utterances had already caused his candidature and the party would be repaired. Instead, he said he was "comfortable supporting him" and that once in the White House, would "respond to the right of the centre world that elected him." There are so many gaps in the Senator's assumptions and conclusions that it only underlines the utter confusion in the Republican Party with Donald Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan after calling Donald Trump a racist went on to state that to defeat Hillary Clinton, he too would support Donald Trump.
Therefore, the Republican Party leadership is in the predicament where they are being forced to back a candidate who has now won himself the trademark of a racist candidate by its own admission. Donald Trump has no confusions or worries about his well-deserved trademark. He has shown no signs of retracting any of his remarks and beliefs that have won him that trademark. It is up to America to decide whether, on November 08, it would be willing to elect such a candidate to the White House. There are millions of racists in the United States. However, it is unlikely even a majority of them, who have thus far energised his campaign, would now be willing to be themselves labelled racist as they surely would if they now vote for him.
The writer is a retired Ambassador.