If you had the time to tune to the 11th Republican debate on Mar. 3, then you had the honor of hearing a memorable and quotable line from the lips of Donald Trump: “He [Marco Rubio] referred to my hands – ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there is no problem. I guarantee.” This is such a wonderful line, that will certainly be shared with our children and grandchildren as words of wisdom from the person we elect to steward the office of the presidency.
After years of attacking the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, the GOP is ready to take back the White House. I highly doubt they will, even if Trump does.
Once the race for the nomination started, several establishment candidates threw their hats into the ring. We had longstanding, experienced governors Bush, Kasich, Perry, Walker, fresh young senators Cruz and Rubio and outsider candidates established in their fields — Carson, Fiorina and Trump. The Republican Party has evolved over the past eight years and that is reflected in the candidates running. Now, with four months left until the Republican National Convention — to be held in Cleveland from July 18 to the 21 — four candidates have emerged: absurd Trump, energetic Rubio, popular Cruz and surprise Kasich. One of these four men will win his party’s nomination for the presidency.
Three of these men are well-established, typical candidates: Cruz, Kasich, Rubio. Then there is Trump. Unlike the other three candidates, he has no political experience, has switched his party affiliation a minimum of five times in his life and has published very few position papers. He is the anti-establishment candidate who reaches the silent majority in the GOP. This should alert everyone.
Trump has no experience in governing. He must know that he cannot violate international sovereignty to force Mexico to build a border wall. Neither does he have a temperament to represent the entire country on every matter foreign and domestic. Does he think he can go to a foreign head-of-state and say, “You’re fired," whenever he wants? Will he tell the queen that she is ugly? Everything he represents goes against the precedent set by 43 men who all put national betterment ahead of personal glory.
This brings me to the Republican pissing match. The establishment candidates are supposed to uphold the establishment they represent. They should uphold the values that their party supports. They may add their own clarifications and caveats, but overall they are the party. The GOP establishment candidates are not doing that this year. Instead they have sunk to Trump’s level, where Trump will beat them, drawing on his years of experience.
Rubio mocked Trump’s small hands and implied that his penis was small, too. Rubio, the Golden-Boy of the Right, thought he could gain points by mocking a man’s penis. In a race for the highest office in the land, arguably the world, for the global representative of the United States, this was the issue that controlled the news cycle. Very few people, myself included, were familiar with Rubio’s immigration plan. Yet he decided to attack Trump’s body.
When a party that has, for 150 years, itself claimed to be the party of Lincoln, is led by men who compete in a middle-school-like pissing match, the former prestige and grandeur it claimed has either disappeared or must be forfeited. Republicans are no longer members of the Grand Old Party but rather the 12-Year-Old Pissing Match Party, all because a man named Trump woke up one morning and said, “I think I’ll run for President." The Republican Party is sinking further and further every day.
Now, if you want to know if the Republican Party can sink any further, ask if Trump could.