Karl Rove, the GOP guru behind the election of former President George W. Bush, is continuing to say many of the same things about Donald Trump that he has for months: the billionaire businessman is divisive, demagogic, and has a “high floor and a low ceiling,” etc. But where Rove insisted as recently as November that Trump would not, or was “unlikely” to, win the Republican presidential nomination, he now seems to have changed his tune.
These days Rove concedes that Trump might win the GOP nod, so long as the field stays crowded. But he adds that, even if that happens, there’s no way the businessman could defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election. As part of this revised narrative, Rove is sketching out exactly where and how Trump would be vulnerable in a general election—and even suggesting some TV commercials that might help Hillary beat him.
Flogging his new book titled “The Triumph of William McKinley: Why The Election of 1896 Still Matters” at Dallas’s Old Parkland this morning, Rove pointed to recent polls showing Trump leading Clinton by “only 12 points” among white voters—Mitt Romney had a 20-point lead among whites in 2012, Rove says—and receiving just 13 percent of Hispanic votes, less than half of what Romney did.
What’s more, Rove went on, since the GOP “has never nominated a candidate who’s declared four bankruptcies,” it should prepare for Trump to be “barbecued” on that issue. Rove then described the type of ads the Democrats might run on the bankruptcy topic, conjuring up a parade of contractors, maids, and small business people describing in “plaintive and heartfelt” terms exactly how Trump had shafted them.
Asked how he would advise Trump’s Republican rivals to compete with him, Rove said grappling with Trump head-on is difficult, thanks to the media. By allowing Trump to phone in to various news programs without showing up at the studios in person—”sitting there in his palatial home, in his pajamas and his bunny shoes”—TV hosts are giving the businessman a free ride, Rove said, adding: ‘This is being driven by the media.” At the same time, he continued, candidates who’ve said more “substantive things,” like Bobby Jindal and Jeb Bush, can’t get their messages across.
“I’m tired of the media not holding [Trump] to account,” Rove said. And if the media won’t do it, he concluded, then “we’re gonna have to do it. The American people are.”
Rove’s appearance was part of the Global Forum series of the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth.
