Trump’s train wreck

If you think the Conservative party is in a bad way over Europe, spare a thought for the Republicans of Washington DC. Their presidential candidate is Donald Trump, and he’s a nightmare. The party can’t stand him, he can’t stand the party, and somehow they’re supposed to win an election together. The omens don’t look good.

Even the influential Republicans who wish Trump well — and there aren’t many — can’t figure out how to get along with him. ‘I just have no idea how you get an idea into Trumpland,’ says Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, who is known as ‘the most powerful conservative in DC’. He adds, ‘In any campaign, the circle of trust shrinks as the campaign goes on. At this stage, Trump’s circle appears already to be very small. It is certainly opaque.’ One younger Republican puts it more bluntly: ‘Trump’s campaign is, like, so random! I mean who are they? And how is anyone supposed to work with them?’

The spectacular amateurism of the Trump campaign — and its undeniable success — distresses professional right-wingers. It threatens their livelihoods and triggers their snobbery. Whereas Clinton has a campaign staff of about 800, Trump has less than 100, and nobody who’s anybody has a clue who they are. Strategists and party loyalists mutter that, before he decided to Make America Great Again, Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s now notorious campaign manager, was running a branch of Quiznos, the fast-food joint. ‘Well, he’s running your party now,’ snaps back Daniel McCarthy, the independent-minded editor of the American Conservative.

The worst part, for elite Republicans, is that they know how beatable Hillary Clinton is. She’s only just won her fight for the Democratic nomination against that kooky 74-year-old socialist Bernie Sanders. People don’t like her. If the Grand Old Party could establish a modus operandi with the Trump campaign, the 2016 election could be theirs.