Donald Trump Triggers a Republican Party Brawl
9th December 2015
In Washington, the nation’s two most powerful Republicans, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, joined on Tuesday in the GOP establishment’s near-universal condemnation of the presidential candidate’s proposal. But in Iowa and New Hampshire, the key early nominating states, Trump’s backers moved forcefully to counter party insiders’ censure.
“It is un-Republican, it is unconstitutional and it is un-American,”Jennifer Horn, the New Hampshire state party chairman said in a statement.
That prompted New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, who backs Mr. Trump, to call for Ms. Horn’s resignation. He said establishment Republicans “don’t like Trump because he tells it like it is. I’m not prejudiced against Muslims, but until we can straighten them out and know who’s who and who is coming into our country, we have to stop the immigration.”
This actually may be a healthy thing for the Republican Party. There has long been a divide between the ‘establishment’ or ‘country club’ faction in the party, which pretty much controls the formal party structure and encompasses most Republican-affiliated legislators, and the ‘movement conservative’ wing, which makes up a strong party of the Tea Party movement and which has criticized the other faction as me-tooist semi-Democrats. Trump’s candidacy has hit this fault line with a meat cleaver, and whatever effect it has on this season’s Presidential race, it may spark an internal ideological revolution and re-alignment in the GOP. Interesting times.