Becoming the enemy?

I’ve seen a lot of people devoting a lot of energy to defeating Donald Trump in his bid to be the Republican candidate for president. Let me say up front that I don’t want Trump, either. Frankly, I don’t want most of the people both parties are forwarding. I’m not sure a candidate I can support is even in the race.

But to those seeking to bring Trump down, let me say this: You don’t defeat the enemy by becoming the enemy.

I’ve seen a lot of hate, invective, hyperbole, and insult leveled at Trump and those voting for him. It’s to the point that I’m not sure I can tell the difference between the Trump camp and the anti-Trump camp. And I can promise you, it’s not going to work. Trump has already tapped into the rage machine. Many of his supporters are those who feel they’ve already born the brunt of the liberal rage machine for the past eight years (or longer) and just don’t care anymore. I doubt it’s going to make the slightest difference if the conservative rage machine turns on them as well. If anything it will just convince them all the more that they are right and that the Republican Party has become largely indistinguishable from the Democratic Party. They’ll cling to their “outsider” Trump like the last floating piece of the Titanic.

If you want to stop Trump and draw away his support you’re going to have to do two things, in a calm, rational manner:

1. Show how Trump’s policies are bad for the country, but give credit where he’s right.
2. Show that there are reliable alternatives in the other candidates. (I don’t know if there are, frankly. I stopped paying attention after Carly Fiorina dropped.)
3. If 1 and 2 don’t work, you’re going to have to reduce the “Not Trump” options to just one Republican candidate so the supposed “Not Trump” majority can find someplace to rally. This assumes, of course, that the Not Trumps outnumber the Trumps. So far this appears to be true, but it’s not necessarily guaranteed that votes currently going to other candidates will automatically go to the Not Trump candidate if their candidate drops out.

People are slow to recognize that Trump is unlike any other candidate we’ve seen in a while. The usual playbooks just don’t work on him. The usual “attack-and-smear” is ineffective because he’s tapped into the segment of the population that recognizes that tactic for what it is and, no matter how right it may be, discount it immediately. They’ve watched helplessly in the past as candidate after candidate they could support succumbs to that strategy, and they’ve been waiting for someone to come along and refuse to play that game. Trump appears to be the first Republican candidate to have read the Alinsky playbook and refuses to fall for it. He’s rightly sensed that the right-wing radicals are starting to outnumber the right-wing moderates and establishment, and he’s learned to play their tune.

You won’t stop Trump by playing his game. You can’t keep doing more of the same and hoping it will work. It’s time for something different, and that “different” is treating his supporters like rational beings–which they are, if given recognition as such. It’s dealing with issues, not emotions. It’s finding someone who, while more moderate than Trump, can show he understands and echoes the concerns of those currently feeling overlooked and under-represented, but can do it in a more tasteful way. It requires cutting off Trump’s oxygen by giving the media something else to fixate on (not an easy task, considering they view Trump as the most horrifyingly fascinating train-wreck ever to grace the airwaves–they just can’t look away).

I’m not sure if Trump is even stoppable at this point. The Republican Party wasn’t prepared for him, and they’re too slow to figure out how to beat him. They’re too slow to listen to their constituents and too slow to provide a single Not Trump for everyone to rally around. They’ve been waiting for Trump to implode, and he’s not imploding. There may still be time to make the case for someone else, but the GOP needs to experience a steep learning curve. I’m not sure they have it in them.

I’m not sure the Democrats are any better off, frankly. But that’s another topic for another time. I fear this fall we’re going to see the results of a political process rapidly being altered to select the most reprehensible candidates we can find. It won’t be so much a question of “who will most help America” as “who will do the least amount of damage”. I’ve believed that’s the case for some time now, but with each passing election the stakes just keep getting higher.