Trump kills GOP autopsy

[applegrove]

Trump kills GOP autopsy

By Kyle Cheney at Politico

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-gop-party-reform-220222

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Now, with Trump’s GOP takeover fully underway, interviews with four co-authors of the 2012 autopsy and 10 other Republican leaders reveal a party establishment terrified that Trump is not only repeating the party’s failures — he’s destroying the party in the process. And while the leaders continue to insist that their report laid out the Republican Party’s best chance of victory, they fear Trump’s dominance will tear the party apart before they ever get a chance to put it in play.

"Swing voters would flock away from him in droves," said Henry Barbour, one of the autopsy’s authors. And as for Trump’s claim that his working-class appealing will bring back Reagan Democrats, the veteran Mississippi Republican operative is unmoved: "He’s chasing some ghost that I don’t think exists anymore."

After mounting for months, tension exploded Thursday with the return of Romney himself, who ripped Trump as a “fraud” and declared him anathema to what the Republican Party aspired to be. It’s part of a last-ditch effort by Romney, 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain and other party leaders to snatch the primary back from Trump before he rolls through to the general election.

But members of the GOP establishment concede that they have little influence over Trump, and have thus far been unable to exert much leverage in their party’s primary: “The party itself is less consequential than ever before, and since our shellacking in 2012, the tribal differences are increasingly irreconcilable,” said former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. “If Trump prevails, he will have single-handedly upended the old Republican order and built a new movement in its place. The question then will be, is it sustainable?”



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