President Barack Obama thinks that the 2016 presidential election could trigger the “corrective” he thinks the Republican Party needs in order to not fall prey to its most “extreme” elements.
“What we’ve seen within the Republican Party has been a refusal even to engage on a whole range of issues like climate change, for example, that are vitally important,” Obama said in an interview published Thursday with The Daily Targum, Rutgers University’s student newspaper. “The issue here has never been both sides stuck in a corner, unwilling to meet in the middle. The challenge has been a Republican Party that has become increasingly ideological and extreme, and I think that’s reflected in the current presidential race.”
“Now the good news is that political parties go through these moments, and there are a lot of good people out there who are Republicans who don’t recognize the direction that the party is taking,” the President continued. “My sense is that there will be a corrective at some point, perhaps after this next presidential election.”
Obama has heavily criticized presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump throughout the 2016 election cycle for his rhetoric and policy proposals.
He agreed to grant a phone interview to the Targum’s editor-in-chief a week before he travels to New Jersey to speak at Rutgers’ commencement ceremony.
h/t Politico
I do hope Barry is right about this, that the GOP will break its fever after Trump falls. But the one topic where I most criticize my dear president is his understanding of and dealings with the GOP.
I don’t see it. When Trump loses, those who voted for him in the primaries will blame the Republican establishment for not backing him, and the whole cycle will begin again in four years’ time. I just don’t know how they can ignore those voters, and they’re not going away anytime soon.
Koch Boys pulling support for TeaPub, Renee Ellmers .
Amen!
False equivalence is the last refuge of scoundrels.
And Very Serious People.
But I repeat myself.
Hope springs eternal.
While I have always admired the president’s optimism, I have often found it to be somewhat misplaced when it has come to predicting the better angels of the GOP nature to finally emerge. At this point continuing to predict it looks more like self-delusion than optimism.
I think this wound, that is going to be so hard for the GOP to cure, is largely self inflicted and, even more largely, an unintended consequence of two things: their extreme gerrymandering success and the Citizen’s United Court decision.
The first goal of pretty much any politician is to get reelected. I can’t really blame them for that. My first goal at work is always not to get fired afterall. Why should I hold that against anyone else? Gerrymandering, among other things, creates more extremely partisan districts. So right off the bat you’ve created an incentive for GOP members to tack to the right.
But the Citizens United decision multiplies that problem. With no restrictions on money in politics and no transparency on where the money is coming from, most GOP members are going to still be more concerned with losing primaries after 2016 than with losing reelection. All the incentives are still going to be to tack hard to the right.
Put in more blunt terms, as frightening as it may be, I don’t think we’ve yet reached Peak Wingnut. I think that will have to wait until at least 2020 when nominee Ted Cruz or, frighteningly, someone more extreme than him, goes down in a truly magnificent blaze of glory. Until then, the GOP base voters who the politicians are incented to cater to, will self-delude yet again that they lost because they nominated a candidate, Trump, that was INSUFFICIENTLY CONSERVATIVE.