The jury is out as to whether Donald Trump’s latest outrageous statement will ultimately undo his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But there is one conclusion to be drawn from this contretemps that is not open to debate: Trump has done an enormous favor for President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Last week began with a near-universal consensus that the president had flubbed an opportunity to reboot his effort to rally support for his anti-terror policies. But just as he did after the Paris attacks, when he lashed out at the press for asking questions about ISIS’s success, in his Oval Office speech on Dec. 6, Obama simply offered more of the same.
He admitted to no errors nor did he own up to the fact that more than a year after his pledge to “degrade and ultimately destroy” Islamic State, it has held its own on the battlefields of the Middle East and been able to launch a mass killing in the heart of Western Europe. San Bernardino showed that ISIS is also able to inspire supporters to kill Americans here in the homeland.
Yet Obama’s basic response was to tell Americans to keep calm and to remember that he is always right. There would be no change in strategy. The only moments in which he could summon up any passion were during his call for more gun control and a presidential lecture about the dangers of Islamophobia.
The former is irrelevant to the question of terror. The emphasis on the later is a dangerous effort to shift the narrative from the threat of Islamist terror while raising the specter of discrimination against American Muslims.
Donald Trump notwithstanding, there is no evidence of such discrimination.
But by late Monday afternoon the discussion had shifted from Obama’s missteps to Trump’s latest broadside. Instead of focusing on a half-hearted anti-terror strategy that we already know won’t defeat ISIS, the country was again engaging in the same futile exercise we’ve been stuck in since the start of the summer: wondering whether Trump has gone too far and debating why it is that so many people support someone who says ridiculous and disgraceful things.
But the man who got away with insulting a war hero, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers, saying the Mexican government could be compelled to pay for a wall along the Rio Grande, proposing to do away with birthright citizenship, and insulting women as well as just about all of his political rivals is probably thinking there is nothing he can’t get away with.
It’s certain that most Americans oppose Trump’s call for bans on Muslim travel, just as they oppose or are deeply skeptical of many of his positions. But Trump is probably right to believe that taking yet another outlandish stand will please that sector of the electorate that is enraged at the political establishment in both parties. Whether they are fed up Tea Partiers or the clichéd stereotypes of white working class voters, Trump’s supporters are not daunted by the universal condemnations of his foolish pronouncements.
It needs to be repeated that his appeal is based on his lack of a filter that might prevent him from saying things that generate condemnations from more responsible politicians and pundits. So in that sense, he’s right that the 20-30 percent of GOP voters who have been backing him in the polls won’t be any more deterred by this instance of his speaking nonsense than they were about anything else he’s said. But doubling down on outrageousness does make it harder to see how he expands on that base in a Republican primary environment or in a general election.
Keeping a tight grip on a significant portion of the GOP voter base will keep you in the lead in a field that is still overpopulated with candidates who have no chance of winning. Yet it should make it easier for either Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio – the candidates who seem best positioned to challenge him after the field is winnowed – to ultimately beat him for the nomination. And it makes his defeat in a general election –should he actually win the nomination – all the more certain.
But let’s understand what Trump really accomplished last week. It’s true he has shown he still has the ability to keep the nation’s attention firmly riveted upon his statements and appearances. That’s been his formula all along. He is a publicity machine and the more tussles he gets into with outraged members of the media, the better he likes it.
Yet his real achievement is to divert the nation away from what we should be discussing. Instead of the country focusing on Obama’s failures, we’re talking about Trump. Rather than discussing a war strategy that seems aimed at kicking the can down the road, the nation is convulsed by an unconstitutional proposal that makes no sense and will never be enacted. And Trump has given credence to a false narrative about Islamophobia that will make it even harder for moderate Muslims to stand up against radical groups that claim to speak for them.
That’s a huge gift to the president at just the moment when he needed Trump to step forward and be his foil. And it’s also exactly what Clinton wants since it helps her brand the entire Republican Party as the creature of Trump’s bizarre whims.