Can Donald Trump be stopped?
Two months before the Iowa caucuses, Donald Trump finds himself in a familiar position: on top in the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
According to a Quinnipiac national survey released Wednesday, Trump leads Florida Sen. Marco Rubio by 10 points, with the billionaire real estate mogul receiving 27 percent support among GOP voters. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson are tied for third at 16 percent, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (5 percent), who is a distant fourth. No other candidate in the Republican field registered more than 3 percent support in the poll.
Trump’s double-digit lead combined with the inability of other GOP candidates like Bush to break through is causing panic among Republican operatives who expected the former “Celebrity Apprentice” star to stumble following his controversial comments about, well, virtually everyone.
“Many leading Republican officials, strategists and donors now say they fear that Mr. Trump’s nomination would lead to an electoral wipeout, a sweeping defeat that could undo some of the gains Republicans have made in recent congressional, state and local elections,” Jonathan Martin wrote in the New York Times. “But in a party that lacks a true leader or anything in the way of consensus — and with the combative Mr. Trump certain to scorch anyone who takes him on — a fierce dispute has arisen about what can be done to stop his candidacy and whether anyone should even try.”
“If he carries this message into the general election in Ohio, we’ll hand this election to Hillary Clinton,” Matt Borges, chairman of the state’s Republican Party, told the paper.
“It would be an utter, complete and total disaster,” added South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is polling below 1 percent in the GOP race. “If you’re a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, you’re going to have a hard time being president of the United States, and you’re going to do irreparable damage to the party.”
Can the summer and fall of Trump be stopped this winter or spring?
“If he did prevail in the primary process,” CNN’s Stephen Collinson wrote, “Trump would present the Republican Party with a dilemma — whether to accept a potential nominee who many fear could stumble in a general election or to try to install an alternative, perhaps in a coup at the party convention in Cleveland that might enrage the GOP base and tear the party apart.”
Perhaps the party should’ve seen this coming.
“Trump’s dominance in this year’s presidential primary race has often been described as a mysterious natural phenomenon: the Donald riding a wild, unpredictable tsunami of conservative populist anger that just now happens to be crashing down on the Republican establishment,” BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins writes in his new book, “The Wilderness.” “But in fact, Trump spent years methodically building and buying support for himself in a vast, right-wing counter-establishment — one that exists entirely outside the old party infrastructure and is quickly becoming just as powerful.”
