OPINION:
Two recent developments have raised questions about billionaire Donald Trump’s staying power as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. One is the latest national poll from Quinnipiac indicating that Mr. Trump’s commanding lead over his Republican rivals may have slipped. Mr. Trump came in with 28 percent, just four percentage points ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who seems to be enjoying a bit of a political surge at the moment. The survey had Florida Sen. Marco Rubio at 12 percent and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent. Jeb Bush, considered some months back as the likely nominee based on name, family and resume, was favored by only 4 percent of respondents.
The other development was Mr. Trump’s crude comments alluding to Hillary Clinton’s late return from a bathroom break during the Democratic presidential debate at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College on Saturday. “I know where she went — it’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it,” said Mr. Trump to a large crowed afterward. “No, it’s too disgusting. Don’t say it, it’s disgusting.” He later dismissed her as a loser, saying she had been “schlonged” by Barack Obama in the 2008 contest for the Democratic nomination.
Now we’ve all seen the coarsening of American society in recent decades, manifest in the popular culture, in the way we treat each other, and, yes, in political discourse. And we all know that Mr. Trump takes the cake in his willingness to employ coarse political language, as when he seemed to make reference to Fox commentator Megyn Kelly’s menstrual cycle, dismissed Sen. John McCain’s war record because he somehow allowed himself to become a prisoner of war (he was shot down over North Vietnam) and mocked a disabled newspaper reporter.
But this is the American presidency we’re talking about, and even in today’s climate of cultural decay there are probably limits to what the American people will tolerate in terms of the vulgarity of their politicians and the boorishness of their rhetoric. Certainly, the collective electorate isn’t likely to be entirely comfortable with political discourse that seems to emanate from a locker room in some junior high school.
As for the Quinnipiac poll, let’s stipulate that the real contest doesn’t begin until voters actually express themselves through the ballot box and in their caucus attendance. But Mr. Trump’s presumed front-runner status has been based almost exclusively on poll results, and hence when a poll shows an erosion in his support it takes on equal significance. Most likely, the two developments — Mr. Trump’s increasing grossness and the latest poll — are related. The poll probably reflects a growing discomfort among respondents with Mr. Trump’s lack of decency and decorum.
But it’s instructive that the candidate who seems to be on Mr. Trump’s heels is not Jeb Bush, scion of the Eastern establishment, from a family that long has regarded decency and decorum as high principles. Rather, it is Mr. Cruz, a bomb-thrower in his own right, a man who rivals Mr. Trump as a scourge of the establishment.
Mr. Bush set himself up early on as the contender most willing to attack Mr. Trump for his tawdriness. “I gotta get this off my chest,” he said recently. “Donald Trump is a jerk….I feel better now….I gave myself therapy there.”
He can give himself all the therapy he wants. Unfortunately for Mr. Bush, this isn’t a race between Mr. Bush’s brand of political niceness and Mr. Trump’s bad-boy temperament. Nor is it a race between Mr. Trump’s brash anti-establishment offensive and Mr. Bush’s political traditionalism. It is a race to determine which Republican can best take on the elites of the country, the parasitic big banks and brokerage houses, the ravages of crony capitalism, our game-the-system tax code, the foreign policy fecklessness. So far Mr. Bush hasn’t demonstrated a zest for this kind of politics, and his poll numbers reflect that.
Mr. Cruz, on the other hand, fuels his campaign with anti-establishment fervor and feisty impulses. He dismisses Washington insiders as a “cabal” and shows disdain for party leaders, including leaders of his own party. He takes positions similar to Mr. Trump’s on numerous issues, including immigration, the Middle East, the financial elites and trade. Both also take exception to their party’s prevailing foreign policy adventurism.
Then there’s Marco Rubio, the candidate who most closely approximates Mr. Bush in outlook and temperament. He’s the current leading establishment candidate.
It’s too early to be tossing around predictions on who is going to emerge victorious in this crazy nomination battle. Better to wait for a few primaries. But we can begin to discern the shape of things to come. The loser is likely to be the Republican establishment — indeed, the political establishment in general. The status quo is looking shaky and appears to be in for a drubbing.
If so, history will identify Mr. Trump as the man who deflected the party and set it upon a new course — not an inconsiderable accomplishment for a man who came out of nowhere to challenge the old order of things. Perhaps he will even go the distance. But it seems more likely that late December 2015 will be seen as the period when his lack of political finesse and common grace spurred the beginning of the end of his remarkable campaign odyssey.
• Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington journalist and publishing executive, is the author of books on American history and foreign policy.
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