COMMENTARY: Anger from within

GOP faithful not as mad at Hillary as much as with own party

Something was eerily off in a public forum in Benton County first thing Wednesday morning.

A conservative crowd of at least 40 vented their frustrations for an hour and a half to a Republican elected official. He happened to be U.S. Rep. Steve Womack of Rogers, but could have been any public official in one of dozens of such meetings I've attended in Northwest Arkansas. In most ways, the get-together at Lowell City Hall was routine.

Hillary Clinton's name didn't come up. If she was mentioned, both my memory and my notes missed it. Womack even brought up the presidential election and the GOP nominee, Donald Trump. Nobody brought up the woman Trump is supposed to stop.

Clinton's loss in Arkansas is assumed, so perhaps the silence shouldn't seem so strange. But Benton County is the cradle, nursery and kindergarten of the Republican Party of Arkansas. A safe bet is that somebody at that forum voted against Bill Clinton every time his name appeared on a Benton County ballot, starting with the 3rd Congressional District race of 1974 -- the seat Womack now holds. People in Benton County were fighting off Clintons before the rest of the country ever heard of them.

Now Clinton's wife, a redder flag to wave in front of Republican voters than him, is running. She's a little more than four months away from likely election as president. Yet the prospect didn't even get passing mention Wednesday. Instead, the conservative crowd kept pressing their grievances against -- the Republican Party, and why it hadn't done more despite the fact of a Democratic president with only seven months left to serve.

Reading too much into one meeting? Perhaps, but I haven't forgotten the biggest mistake made by politicos, candidates and pundits -- myself included -- this year by far. Almost all of us severely underestimated the frustration of Republican voters with their own party. That frustration is the principal reason the Republican primary was a debacle, Trump is the likely GOP nominee -- and Hillary Clinton is close to the political comeback of the century.

The frustration level is still high, and very likely to rise.

The GOP has settled upon Trump, a man most stalwart Republicans don't like. Trump came in third in Benton County's Republican primary. Now he's had a terrible beginning to his general election campaign. This stumbling out of the gate has only increased the party's frustration level, it seems. I don't even want to imagine what meetings like Wednesday's will sound like if Trump loses.

There's still a chance his Republican opponents can stop Trump at the convention, which begins July 18. A candidate switch might save the party some embarrassment, but not the election. Who will vote for the nominee of a party that won't abide by the decision of its own primary?

I don't believe the conspiracy theory that Bill Clinton convinced Trump to run and sabotage the Republicans. If I'm wrong, Bill Clinton is a genius and this is his masterpiece.

You go to elections with the candidates you have. These are two of the best-known personalities in the United States. That matters. Even a long-serving, very powerful senator such as Bob Dole of Kansas was someone whose perception by the public could be shaped. He wasn't pre-formed in voter's minds (outside of Kansas) when he ran for president in 1996. The same was true to an even greater extent with George W. Bush in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2008. Starting out, there was some room for people to believe what they wanted to about them -- good or bad.

One of the best-known facts about Trump and Hillary Clinton is that they are two of the most unpopular people to ever run for president. The far, far more important fact about them politically is how the public perceptions of them is fixed already. The paint is dry. The cement is hardened. The clay is baked. Whether the prevailing perception about them among any meaningful group of voters is accurate or not, the view of each group will be hard to change. That bodes badly for the trailing Trump.

Somebody will say Clinton will be indicted before the election because of her e-mails. Good luck with that. The "Clinton is going to be indicted any minute now" string of rumors is older than two of my kids, the youngest of whom is a sophomore at the University of Arkansas.

If anything changes, I'll post it here. For now, I'm planning to stand near the door at the first forum I attend after election day.

Commentary on 07/02/2016

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