(guess who’s winning!)
Another round of pre-election elections (also known as Primaries, I think, US politics is just plain weird) has come and gone, and the force that unifies both sides in the campaign – Donald Trump – has taken yet another huge stride toward becoming the Republican party candidate for the Presidential election later this year. Why do I say he unifies both sides? Easy, neither side wants him to win.
The Republican party leadership are worried that his rhetoric, whilst appealing very much to the core of the party’s membership, will cripple his chances of becoming President when played out in the arena that is the election campaign. ‘How will Trump appeal to all those he has spent time denouncing when he suddenly needs their votes?’ is a question I can imagine being asked by the bigwigs in the Republican party.
Yet, despite the best efforts of the party, Trump continues to gain momentum – he is very much leading the race to become the bold face of the Republican party – and no one seems able to slow him down, let alone stop him.
I’ve read a couple of interesting ideas that Trump is in fact quite left-wing – how does he therefore have strong appeal to the hardcore of a right-wing party?
The answer is simple. Trump is not a ‘liberal’, but very much a conservative – as the link shows, his position on a lot of issues is very different to those taken by leading Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. Whilst it is understandable that Republican supporters may want to distance themselves from Trump’s bluster, to suggest he is anything other than a product of the Republican party and its ideals is dishonest – he would not resonate so strongly with their supporters if he were anything but a right-winger.
Right now, the Republican party needs to stop playing the blame game and start looking at its own faults and failures, and take the necessary steps to address them. Otherwise, Trump will become the face of their party, and in all likelihood destroy whatever credibility they have left.
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