Is Trump sabotaging himself?
By Michael Gerson Opinion writer April 14 at 7:15 PM
washingtonpost.com
Welcome to Donald Trump’s banana republic. “We’re going to have protests, demonstrations,” says Trump surrogate and confidante Roger Stone. “We will disclose the hotels and the room numbers of those delegates who are directly involved in the steal. If you’re from Pennsylvania, we’ll tell you who the culprits are. We urge you to visit their hotel and find them.”
This is the Trump-world version of a counterpunch. Lose in a delegate-selection process you’ve known about for a year but didn’t prepare for. Respond with brutish threats of mayhem and personal harm.
Some presidential candidates tease out the latent idealism of their fellow citizens. Trump promises to pay the legal bills of followers who assault protesters. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Those who believe that politics is a low and dirty business are often the ones who make it so. Trump has a genuine contempt for the profession he seeks to join, and he is doing his best to make it contemptible. He is featuring the kind of bullying vindictiveness that Richard Nixon took great pains to conceal. We don’t need to subpoena the tapes; we have the tweets. Trump will clearly do anything to become president.
Except hire an adequate campaign team, open a briefing book and make any real preparations to govern.
This is, by far, the most confusing aspect of Trump’s campaign. He may be ruthless, but it remains unclear what he actually wants. Three or four weeks ago, many in the Republican Party seemed prepared to accept his nomination, if he could pivot to a more presidential style. Focus groups of GOP voters found some discontent with Trump’s excesses but little of the disdain that motivates GOP elites. “Non-Trump voters,” an Annenberg Center focus group concluded, “did not demonstrate the kind of true ideological cleavage that causes floor fights or makes delegates walk out of conventions.”
So all Trump had to do was act briefly like a normal candidate. What followed was an attack on the wife of his main opponent, another obsessive swipe at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, an answer on abortion that showed a complete lack of preparation and then a full-scale assault on the credibility of the Republican primary process (which he calls “ absolutely rigged”). Hiding in a cave would have been a more effective political strategy.
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