5 Reasons Donald Trump Scares Republicans


If you are as curious as I am about the rise of Donald Trump, it should be no wonder that many on the right are up in arms about The Donald. Having written several times about Trump since the early days of the campaign, I can now give a brief overview of why he is ruffling so many feathers in traditional GOP circles:

1) He supports eminent domain. Eminent domain is an absolute necessity,” said Donald Trump during the Feb. 6 2016 Republican presidential debate. “Without it,” he claimed, “you wouldn’t have roads, you wouldn’t have hospitals, you wouldn’t have anything. You wouldn’t have schools, you wouldn’t have bridges. You need eminent domain.”

2) He is toxic.  The latest high- ranking defection from a supporter who has typically gone all-out for the party is George F. Will. The a conservative columnist and prominent Republican pundit for the past 40 years, said he has left the Republican Party because Donald J. Trump is the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

In an interview with PJ Media, Will said he had recently switched his party registration to unaffiliated. Republicans should “grit their teeth” during a Hillary Clinton presidency and then hope to beat her in 2020, he contends.

“This is not my party,” Mr. Will said in a June 24 speech at the Federalist Society before the PJ Media interview.

Even far-right members of Congress, including Rep. Raúl R. Labrador of Idaho, who has a near perfect rating on the Conservative Review Scorecard, have their criticisms: “I will not stand idly by listening to a person attacking the integrity of a judge because of their ethnicity,” he said at a monthly news conference he holds with a group of his fellow conservatives in the House of Representatives. “That is absolutely morally abhorrent.”

No one expects Republicans to carry the Hispanic vote since Democrats have dominated it for decades, winning at least 56 percent in each of the past nine presidential elections, according to CNN. "Still, the share of the vote that the GOP nominee claims matters a great deal: Every Republican over that time who has won at least a third of the Hispanic vote has won the presidency — Ronald Reagan won 35 percent and 37 percent, respectively, in his two victories, and George W. Bush won 35 percent and 40 percent in his two bids. Only George H.W. Bush in 1988 won less than a third (30 percent) but still carried the day."

"Unlike a presidential primary, in which Trump can go from state to state appealing only to his populist conservative base, he now has to run a national campaign against a single opponent in an election in which more than 125 million Americans are likely to cast ballots," says columnist Ben Jacobs. "Trump has to build an organisation capable not just of turning out the true believers wearing his trademark Make America Great Again hats, but also swing voters. For all his appeal, Trump still had great difficulty winning a majority of the vote in competitive Republican primaries, and faces a far bigger challenge winning a majority in a general electorate, of which roughly 30% of voters will be members of minority groups."

3) He could ruin the upcoming GOP convention. Prominent conservatives, including Utah Rep. Mia Love, are sitting out the Republican convention. "I don't see any upsides to it," Love told reporter Matt Canham. "I don't see how this benefits the state."

She's the only member of Utah's 40-person delegation to back out of the convention, though others are considering it, largely over opposition to Trump, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.

Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox previously said: "I have not been supportive of Mr. Trump, and I'm not really excited to go back to a convention that's centered around him. ... There's a chance I don't go."

4) He is a big fan of government power. "But on issue after issue, Trump vows to use government as a tool to improve the lot of his supporters, and address their anxieties," columnist Yoni Applebaum wrote on Mar. 30, 2016.  "He’d interfere in free markets, imposing tariffs to punish companies that move factories offshore, and countries with abusive trade practices. He’s pledged to preserve Social Security. He’s proposed, at various times, registering Muslims and banning them from entering the country."

5) Donald Trump is scary. He's unpredicatable and uncontrolled. Rutgers University Political Science Professor Dr. Elizabeth Hull said to NewsOne that GOP hostility towards its frontrunner stems from him pulling the mask off the party and his constant boastings about not being funded by Super PACs or big donors, unlike his rivals:

“The Republican Party fears Trump for two reasons: One, his bigotry and bald-faced racism expose the Party for what it’s become ever since adopting its Southern Strategy in 1968; since then, it has demonized every group other than its own right-of-center White constituency; and Two, Trump can’t be controlled by the corporate interests that have successfully pulled the strings on virtually every other GOP office-holder.“

Can you imagine the ultraconservative billionaire GOP donor Koch brothers turning for Hillary Clinton? The Koch family is an American family engaged in business and philanthropy, most noted for their political activities and control of Koch Industries, the second-largest privately owned company in the United States (with 2013 revenues of $115 billion).

Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch, today commonly referred to as the Koch brothers — and the only two of Fred Koch's four sons still with Koch Industries — are affiliated with the Koch family foundations. They have also founded and funded a number of conservative and libertarian political organizations. Charles Koch told ABC News that it’s “possible” Clinton would make a better president than Trump. A spokesman for the brothers declined to rule out the possibility of backing the former secretary of state, though he implicitly criticized both her campaign and Trump’s..


EXTRAS:

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson, founder of Red State and a well-known Christian and political voice, also held little back, imploring Christians to be ashamed of the Dobson story, Deseret News reported.

 "So let’s get this straight. Less than a week ago, evangelicals meet with Trump and, after much criticism for the embrace some gave him, someone told James Dobson who told the media that Trump found Jesus recently," Erickson wrote. "I thought he was a Christian last year." And he wasn't done there. "If you are a Christian and do not have a sense of shame over this story, you should. This is shameful and embarrassing," Erickson continued. "It is made more embarrassing that someone would take advantage of an 80-year-old James Dobson."

UPDATE 7/21/2016

Donald Trump was furious. Melania Trump was humiliated. And the campaign, which had appeared to be on the path to becoming a more organized, disciplined operation, was back on its heels, dealing with swirling accusations and internal finger-pointing that yielded no real answers about what happened, according to CNN. The uproar was yet another unsettling episode for the Trump campaign at a time when many top donors are closely watching Trump and his operation to determine whether it is worth their investment this fall.

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