Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
William Weld Challenges Trump for GOP Nomination
Donald Trump's hold on the Republican Party for the first year-and-a-half of his presidency was truly solid. As the mid-terms approached, there was a bit of wavering. After the shellacking the party took in November, there has been a sense among some Republicans that they were following Mr. Trump off a cliff. To the rescue comes former Massachusetts Governor William Weld who will challenge Mr. Trump in the primaries. He probably won't win this rear-guard action of decent conservatives, but he doesn't need to. He merely needs to wound Mr. Trump so deeply that November 2020 marks the end of Trumpism.
Mr. Weld was a somewhat effective Republican governor of Massachusetts, a quite left-of-center state, back in the 1990s. In 2016, he put himself forward as the Libertarian Party's nominee for Vice President, supporting New Mexico's former governor, Gary Johnson. He is fighting name recognition issues nationwide, but given New Hampshire's proximity to Massachusetts, Mr. Weld should do fine in the Granite State's primary next year.
What does that mean? He probably isn't going to win the primary, and so, that needs to be removed from the equation immediately. The Trump supporters remain a rabid, irrational bunch. However, there are also an equally rabid and much more rational bunch of conservative Never-Trumpers. They have seen the party of Ronald Reagan turn into the party of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. They will organize, and they will vote. There just won't be enough for them to prize the nomination out of Mr. Trump's small hands.
Their model, whether or not they acknowledge or understand it, is that of Eugene McCarthy's run in 1968 against President Johnson. Senator McCarthy opposed the Vietnam War, and it was this stance that brought out the kids who organized his race ("Go clean for Gene" was the motto urging young men supporting him to cut their hair and put on ties). The March 12, 1968, New Hampshire primary was not as big a deal as the state's contest has become. For the most part, it was almost a straw poll that chose some delegates from a pre-approved list of candidates to attend the Chicago convention. It was only after 1968 that the primaries became the main method of delegate selection.
The president had the advantage of office and therefore, name recognition, and he won the primary by a margin of 50-42%. That needs to be repeated; President Johnson won the 1968 New Hampshire primary. Four days later, Bobby Kennedy joined the race on the anti-war side. Less than three weeks after the primary, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek nor would he accept the nomination of his party for another term. He didn't have the stomach for the fight he could probably have won.
In the case of Mr. Trump, his ego is at least as large as LBJ's, and indeed, one believes the Trump ego could eat LBJ's ego for breakfast and still feel hungry. It is that ego that holds the key to the Weld campaign's fortunes. If Mr. Weld can score well enough in New Hampshire, losing by single digits for example, that the inevitability of a second term for Mr. Trump is called into question, Mr. Trump may suddenly decide that his health and his business interests need his attention resulting in his retirement from politics.
If Mr. Trump's nose is sufficiently bloodied, others who are more credible than Mr. Weld may join the campaign. Governor John Kasich of Ohio springs to mind.
This really is the last chance for the conservative Reagan wing of the party to seize it back from the fascist Trump wing. If they fail to do so, the future of traditional conservative thought and action in US politics will be a minor sideshow. That is certainly not good for the political right, and it probably isn't good for the country in the long run.
© Copyright 2019 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
Kensington Review Home
|
|
|
