If Super Tuesday goes as expected, this is the night that the Republican party starts looking ahead to who will run against President Hillary Clinton in the 2020 campaign. Texas may be the only state where celebrity candidate Donald Trump won’t score a victory tonight–making him very hard to beat for the nomination. It also likely crushes my dream of a brokered convention this summer, where House Speaker Paul Ryan ends up getting the nomination and the GOP actually has a chance to win.
A Trump nomination also likely puts at risk the majorities Republicans currently hold in the Senate, the House and Governorships that are also up for election in November. The average Trump voter isn’t interested in actual issues–and there are not too many other candidates below him on the ballot that just go around yelling non-sequiturs, brag about how powerful they perceive themselves to be or pretend that they are somehow going to operate outside the parameters of the Constitution and current laws. What member of Congress–besides Sean Duffy here in Wisconsin–had his own reality show? How can they consider themselves qualified to hold public office?
I think it can be a good thing to suffer the kind of blood-letting defeat that lies ahead with Donald Trump at the top of the Republican ticket. It will force the party to examine itself at all levels–because if you have just one person–Speaker Ryan–that offers any sort of hope for a credible national candidate that everyone in American hasn’t already grown tired of hearing. Move the Evangelicals out of the way and get the disciples of Karl Rove and their “divide and conquer” mentality out of leadership so the GOP can return to being the party of fiscal conservatism and letting people live their lives they way they want to. Let the Democrats go back to being the party of angry people.
So tomorrow, let’s dust ourselves off, avoid the temptation to pout and point fingers of blame, roll up our sleeves and get to work on a winning strategy for 2020. Election Day is just four years and eight months away!
