The US Republican Party contemplates disaster
The countdown of the US presidential race has begun, and the entire world is wondering, aghast, if the good people of the United States, in their infinite wisdom, will actually elect a self-confessed sexual molester and incorrigible liar, a.k.a. New York tycoon Donald J. Trump.
Take a deep breath. Despite the recent brouhaha over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's negligent handling of emails, I still believe Clinton will win. Winning US presidential elections takes a level of organisation and planning that is beyond the erratic Trump.
Let's take a closer look at the serious long-term damage caused by Trump.
Trump was a fixture in the New York tabloids for decades. His bombast was so over the top that it was almost comical. Many dismissed him as a pompous oaf.
Nobody is laughing now.
Least of all the Republican Party. The party has been torn apart. Trump has provided a laser focus for the rage of a constituency of the Republican Party that is seething. These are mainly non-college educated whites. As millions of manufacturing jobs have disappeared, their economic world has collapsed. For years and years, instead of providing answers to their economic woes, the Republican Party has indulged their xenophobia and prejudice.
Trump's rants against the Republican and Democratic establishment, the political class, America's foreign trading partners - all of this may seem transparently bogus to anybody with a passing familiarity with the issues, but it resonates deeply with the disaffected.
This angry Republican constituency is out for blood. They want to deal a devastating blow to the Republican political class that they feel has taken them for a ride.
Trump has been exceptionally astute in gauging their anger - and he has turned it into political gold. Now he has a core group of people around him that includes his family members and those associated with the fringe and extreme rightwing news website Breitbart.com. Breitbart.com is so extreme that it makes conservative media channel Fox look mainstream. Its boss Stephen Bannon currently serves as Trump's campaign manager.
The party establishment is appalled and shell-shocked. Politico described its situation recently: "Far from the halls of the Hoover Institution and big Washington policy shops is a force they cannot control: The Trump campaign, a small collection of social-media gurus, Breitbart alumni, and Trump family members who have managed to capture the majority of Republican voters in the US, and who may use their new axis of the GOP, or both. As the old establishment looks on in horror, the civil war in its ranks has already begun."
This civil war will be ugly, and it will happen regardless of whether Trump wins or loses. If he wins, then his constituency owns the party - with the conservative and Republican establishment left to wonder about their relevance. As former House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, had noted acidly, a leader without followers without is just taking a walk.
If Trump loses, his supporters may well turn their rage inward. That could mean more political mayhem.
To be fair, Trump did not create this resentment, he is just capitalising on it. Similar resentment has led to the rise of xenophobic, sometimes outright racist, rightwing parties in many countries in the West - Eastern European countries, Greece, France, the UKIP in Britain.
Even the Democratic Party has not been immune in the US. Who would have thought that an elderly Socialist from Vermont would seize the imagination of the millennials this year? Sen. Bernie Sanders presented an unexpectedly robust challenge to Hillary Clinton. But to the credit of Democrats, they managed to resolve their internal differences. Sanders is now campaigning for Clinton.
No such luck for the Republicans. That may have to do with the party's less-than-stellar record.
Substantial parts of the party establishment have been happy to fan the flames of resentment, promoting the extremist tea party, spreading vicious critiques of Democrats. Fox News, right wing talk radio hosts, politicians all participated.
Now the tiger has turned on its rider. The National Journal wrote in a scathing recent commentary:
"Republicans will now have four years to think about what they did to themselves this year, plenty of time to contemplate the consequences of handing over their party's car keys to the tea-party movement and watching as the quintessential tea partier, Donald Trump, drove the car over a cliff. "
Whether Trump wins or loses, the bloodbath in the Republican Party will not be a pretty sight.
"The likelihood of the Republican Party surviving this, of there being another Republican president in the future, is small," a movement conservative who served in the Bush White House told Politico. "I don't think the party survives."