WSJ: Trump’s Hostile GOP Takeover

How can evangelicals support a candidate with such deep-seated character flaws?

By William Galston

February 16, 2016

The Wall Street Journal

As the South Carolina presidential primary looms, the Republican Party faces a moment of truth. Since 1980, the winner of the state’s Republican primary has gone on to win the nomination every time except 2012. This time, with less than a week to go, Donald Trump leads his nearest rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, by a margin of more than 2 to 1. It would take a seismic shift in the contest’s closing days to produce victory for anyone other than the New York billionaire.

Not long ago, longtime leaders of the Republican establishment seemed poised to make their peace with Mr. Trump. As a man of no fixed principles, they reasoned, he was someone with whom they could do business. Without deep roots in their party, he would leave the current structure and personnel pretty much as they are. Faced with the challenges of actual governance, he would end up staffing his administration with their people and taking their advice.

After Mr. Trump’s beyond-the-pale debate performance on Saturday, they may want to reconsider. The front-runner declared war on the entire Republican Party and made clear his intention to execute a hostile takeover. Jaws dropped from coast to coast when he accused George W. Bush of lying about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction so that he could plunge the nation into a war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

To state the obvious, this accusation is false, and recklessly so. Although I was an early, fervent opponent of the Iraq war, it was clear to me and most others that senior Bush administration officials and the president himself believed what they were saying.

In advance of his 2003 U.N. speech, Secretary of State Colin Powell spent nearly a week at the CIA vetting the intelligence supporting the claim that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and a rapidly advancing nuclear-weapons program.

Mr. Powell emerged satisfied enough to deliver the speech he came to regard as a blot on his record. Although he later pronounced himself “devastated” that some intelligence officials muzzled their doubts about the reliability of the evidence against Saddam Hussein, he never intimated that President Bush was party to a world-historical deception.

In the wake of behavior that plumbs the depths of irresponsibility, one might imagine support for Mr. Trump among the party faithful would collapse. Perhaps it will, but there is as yet no evidence of such a development.

A survey sponsored by the South Carolina House Republican Caucus and conducted on Sunday, the day after the debate, found Mr. Trump’s support holding firm at 33%, with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz at 14%, Jeb Bush at 13% and John Kasich at 10%. The front-runner led in every category, topping Mr. Cruz among tea party identifiers and libertarians, topping Mr. Rubio among conservatives and Mr. Kasich among moderates. Mr. Trump led among seniors, young adults and every age cohort in between.

Although the survey didn’t break out white evangelicals, who will make up about 60% of the Republican-primary electorate in the state, basic math shows that Mr. Trump is virtually certain to be leading Mr. Cruz in this category as well. (He beat Mr. Cruz 28%-24% among these voters in New Hampshire.) If so, this would be astounding. Evangelicals have long taken personal conduct as a test of fitness for public office, and Mr. Trump doesn’t come close to passing that test. When it comes to matters that evangelicals say they care about, Mr. Trump’s conversion to social conservatism is of recent vintage and dubious reliability.

I have asked some respected evangelical intellectuals to explain this curious phenomenon. Most express baffled dismay. One offered a disturbing hypothesis: Evangelicals are terrified that everything they value is under assault, and they have concluded that only a strongman can stem the tide. So they are willing to make common cause with someone they normally would disdain. But when you sup with the devil, goes the saying, you’d better have a long spoon.

The Trump phenomenon offers a moral challenge not only to evangelicals, but to the entire Republican leadership. Nine months ago I couldn’t imagine a scenario in which Mr. Trump would receive his party’s nomination and go on to win the presidency. Now I can. If he wins in South Carolina, conscientious Republicans will have to ask themselves whether they can be complicit in a course of events that hands the Oval Office to a man so manifestly unfit for the presidency. It is hard to decide which is a greater threat to the republic—Donald Trump’s pervasive ignorance or his deep-seated character flaws.

Some leading Republicans have quietly told me that they would break ranks if Mr. Trump wins their party’s nomination. A few have said so publicly. Unless a viable alternative emerges soon, every Republican will face the same dilemma.

Article Link to the Wall Street Journal:

Trump’s Hostile GOP Takeover

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