#dnaEdit: Trump campaign implodes

Donald Trump has a peculiar problem. His campaign is going from bad to worse but the Don does not seem to realise that. Having won the Republican primaries and secured the party’s nomination, good sense dictated that Trump moderate his message and woo the fence-sitters. Not so for a man who is so full of himself that he has landed in one soup after another in vain attempts to soothe his bruised ego which bristles with frothing indignation each time criticism comes its way. Political careers are built on stomaching insults, braving criticism, relying on tact, and turning crisis to opportunity. Not so for Trump. His intemperate duel with Khizr Khan, the father of a slain US marine of Pakistani origin, was an unmitigated blunder. Trump’s tactic of questioning the patriotism of Muslims, undocumented immigrants and anyone who disagreed with him came to a grinding halt after Khan’s stirring riposte: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one”. 

Trump’s unpredictability and his hotheaded responses have also led Democrats and security experts to wonder aloud whether he can be trusted with nuclear weapons. After the alleged Russian hack of the Democratic Party’s computer systems, Trump’s response was to ask Russia to find the e-mails that Hillary Clinton did not furnish during a federal inquiry into her use of a private mail server. To invite another country to snoop on a rival’s e-mails is not the best statement of a candidate’s democratic credentials. But Trump has now travelled further down that road with remarks intended to gravely provoke the gun lobby by warning that a Clinton Presidency could lead to a repeal of the Second Amendment which legalises gun ownership. Till now, the roster of Trump’s inflammatory remarks boasted of statements reeking of misogynism, Islamophobia, racism, immigrant bashing and criticism of the US’ NATO allies. But provoking fanatical gun owners is a new low even by Trump’s standards. Republican senator Susan Collins summed it up best when she said: “He does not have the restraint and the consideration and the judgment and the knowledge to handle those dangerous events with which presidents are inevitably confronted.”

In an attempt to deflect attention from the series of blunders that have marked his campaign, Trump has announced a revamped tax reform which will lower tax burdens but raises questions about how the gaping hole in the fiscal deficit will be plugged. If nothing else, it is Trump’s cavalier attitude to questions of foreign and economic policy that has the Republican Party worried. Wrong decisions on core issues will cloud the Republican Party’s legacy forever and undermine the conservative agenda. Having nominated him at last month’s Republican National Convention, it is too late for the party to field another candidate. Even the option of picking another nominee was fraught with the risk of Trump splitting the party and walking away with a big chunk of its support base. Opinion polls indicate that Hillary has a 10 per cent lead over Trump with the past voting record indicating that such leads towards mid-August lead to big victories for the front-runner. As the Trump campaign implodes, the Republican leadership would do well to remember that the mindless policy of obstructionism towards Barack Obama has allowed Trump to portray himself as the man who will make America great again.