The last vestige of our 9/11 unity -- a solemn and mournful lack of finger-pointing about that day -- fell away last week.
Of course, George W. Bush was president on 9/11. He's the one we all rallied behind. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hit us all like a bolt from the blue. We could have made accusations about the people in charge. We could have asked them tough questions. By and large, we didn't.
A week ago Friday, Donald Trump had an interview with Bloomberg TV. "When you talk about George Bush -- I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time." His clearly aghast interviewer interrupted: "Hold on. You can't blame George Bush for that." Trump replied. "He was president, OK? Blame him or don't blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign."
There's no core tenet of establishment Republican faith more sacred than the belief that Republicans keep us safe and Democrats don't. Trump's statements, in the context of running against George W's brother, are heresy to party creed, or so I thought. But heresy would have been punished.
The first polls to include post-Friday responses came out early this week. At first, Trump's numbers didn't budge. He's still the GOP front-runner. His closest opponent is Ben Carson, a man even less touched by relevant experience. The numbers for one of Trump's few remaining viable competitors, Carly Fiorina, heavily dropped. Bucking the trend, though, was a poll from Iowa reported Thursday. It showed likely caucus voters there dramatically switching their support to Carson. If true, it was a large and potentially very significant shift among the party loyal. Trump may finally have gone too far.
Jeb Bush, brother of George W, still polls below 5 percent. He's now fallen below 10 percent in Florida -- Florida, the state where he was once governor. Sen. Marco Rubio is still relatively healthy, but Rubio once supported immigration reform. I very strongly doubt anyone who once proposed moderate immigration reform can win the GOP presidential primary in 2016.
"By definition I don't think you can be a front-runner if you're totally un-electable," Mike Murphy, one of Jeb Bush's longest allies, said about Trump. "I think there's there an a-priori logic problem in that." The party will settle down and select a real candidate, he said.
Murphy was clearly doing damage control. More importantly, he assumes there's no bigger goal for GOP voters than winning the next election. Why should they care about that? What good has winning elections done conservatives? Trump/Carson voters seem more interested in ripping control of the party away from an establishment that has -- to be blunt -- horribly mismanaged everything except winning elections.
George W. Bush could have asked for gas rationing, a balanced budget, the draft and to move Christmas back a few months on Sept. 11, 2001. We would have given it to him. The whole civilized world -- most Muslims included -- were behind us or at least not against us. There's been no greater epoch-making opportunity in my lifetime. Republican leadership utterly wasted it.
Conservative voters remember that. Now they see President Obama in the White House, Obamacare, impotence of their biggest congressional majority since 1929, a gargantuan national debt, a surveillance state and gay marriage. They have every right to ask how we got from there to here.
I don't know who's going to be more frustrated in 2016. Republicans win all the elections but can't get the policies they want or reverse social tides. Democrats have all the social issues going their way but can't win anything but the presidential election.
For the GOP, there's no good answer to why those who picked George W -- the same people backing his brother -- should be allowed to pick another candidate. And when you're dealing with king-makers, exactly the threat you should use to get their attention is to coldly tell them they'll never get to pick another king again until they at least listen to you.
On top of all this, Republican voters aren't stupid. Talk about "totally un-electable." The rank and file know that in a retread rematch between the Bushes and the Clintons, the Bushes will lose.
The establishment and their donors are going to have to go nuclear with negative ads to stop Trump. Even if that works, I thoroughly doubt the candidate who survives will be the "serious" candidate they crave.
Commentary on 10/24/2015