Ever since we started reporting on the 2016 Republican primaries, we have not hidden the fact that Donald Trump is our preferred nominee. Now he has won. Hurray.
The Donald will now square up against Hillary Clinton, whom we have also been saying will win the Democratic Party’s nomination. The next US president will be a New Yorker.
We had been advising the Republican elite to negotiate with Trump, instead of fighting him, but they wouldn’t listen. Now see. They are entirely at Trump’s mercy when they could have negotiated from a position of relative strength even weeks ago.
They could have sent a team to Trump Tower or wherever they felt comfortable to say to Mr. Trump. ‘Hey, let’s talk.’ ‘Let’s make a deal.’ But they felt so proud. Why feel so proud when the party is just your platform, not your personal property?
We pointed out to them what politically active Republican billionaires like the Koch brothers and former New York mayor Bloomberg had seen, based on their calculations: that Trump was going to win the Republican nomination, but they wouldn’t budge.
Trump is not as harsh as the Republican elite made him out to be. He is a deal maker who relishes making deals and would happily have come to a favourable agreement with the Republican elite, but they wouldn’t deign to meet him halfway. Now they have needlessly shot themselves in the foot.
Many options vs no option
The truth is that if the Republican elite had no options for manoeuvrability while Trump had many options as far as this election circle is concerned. for instance, if the Republican elite had succeeded in stopping Trump in a contested convention, he would simply have left the party with a yuge number of grassroots Republicans, breaking the party in this election and possibly dealing it an existential blow.
But now that they refused to negotiate, they are entirely at Mr. Trump’s mercy. Anything he chooses to give them , they have to take.
A shout out to Chris Christie and Ben Carson for seeing the light early enough. They backed Trump early on and now it is clear they backed the winning team. They have a strong voice at the table.
Ray of hope for the elite
Having said all this, there is still a ray of hope for he Republican elite, because Donald Trump is still interested in uniting the Republican Party, in order to face the Democrats with more energy. What the elite can offer Trump is party unity.
That is the only card left for them to play and they should play it soonest for it to be effective. They should go meet their front runner Trump and say, ‘Mr. Trump, we have finally come to take you up on your offer for party unity’. Let’s discuss.’
And then when an agreement is reached, they shouldn’t just offer lukewarm support, but they should go out being gong ho about the Trump campaign. I don’t need to remind them that Trump now holds all the cards and wouldn’t hesitate to dump them if he suspected any ‘eye service’ in their support.
That way they can fuse themselves into the Trump team, long before November, and have a claim to any fruits of victory therefrom. Mr. Trump is a very magnanimous person, and wouldn’t hesitate to forget the past if someone like Marco Rubio or Paul Ryan were to offer an olive branch for the sake of party unity.
It will not be easy because the Democratic Part would do all it can to lampoon the Neo Trumpists as flip-floppers. But they brought it upon themselves, so they should suck it up and bear it. Mr. Trump will surely appreciate any energy they infuse into his campaign, even though he can go the whole hog himself.
Congratulations to him
He was my preferred candidate as well