New York Times Puts Front-Page Pressure on GOP to Dump Trump

By Clay Waters | July 10, 2015 | 2:56 PM EDT

Friday's front-page New York Times "news analysis" reveled in the alleged difficulties posed to the Republican Party by real-estate mogul and presidential hopeful Donald Trump, under fire for controversial statements about illegal immigrants from Mexico.

A Times triumvirate of reporters held the party's feet to the fire and found an age/racial angle to boot ("aging, anxious white voters"), while urging the GOP to denounce Trump, as of yesterday. "Can't Fire Him: G.O.P. Frets Over What to Do With Trump," was reported by Michael Barbaro (pictured), Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Martin, none of whom can be said to have the GOP's best interests at heart, as shown by their previous biased reporting. The jump headline: "Donald Trump's Strident Language Silences Many Republicans."

Republican Party leaders agonize over the prospect that Donald Trump will mount a third-party candidacy that could undermine their nominee. They fear insulting the white working-class voters who admire him. They are loath to tangle with a threat-flinging firebrand for whom there are no rules of engagement.

Since the start of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, a vexing question has hovered over his candidacy: Why have so many party leaders -- privately appalled by Mr. Trump’s remarks about immigrants from Mexico -- not renounced him?

It turns out, interviews show, that the mathematical delicacy of a Republican victory in 2016 -- and its dependence on aging, anxious white voters -- make it exceedingly perilous for the Republican Party to treat Mr. Trump as the pariah many of its leaders now wish he would become.

A few weeks ago, those divisions were on vivid display at a regular gathering of top Republican elected officials, strategists and the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Over dinner at the Hay-Adams Hotel opposite the White House, some argued for a swift response, fearing Mr. Trump would mar the coming Republican presidential debates with his needless provocations. Others counseled a hands-off approach, fearing attempts to rein him in would only turn him into a political martyr and, worse, tempt him toward that third-party run.

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Mr. Trump, the New York developer, reality television host and political provocateur, shows no signs of backing off from his remarks, made during his announcement of a campaign for the White House three weeks ago.

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said then. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems. And they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

In the days after, there has been a striking absence of public denunciations of Mr. Trump from leading Republican candidates for president and the party’s top officials in Washington. Only last weekend did Jeb Bush -- after a muted earlier response -- call the “rapists” comment “extraordinarily ugly” and “not reflective of the Republican Party.”

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Mr. Trump’s language about Mexicans highlighted two of the most divisive issues within the Republican coalition -- race and immigration. It was Mr. Priebus who led a bracing review of the party’s 2012 losses, resulting in dire warnings about its need to improve its standing with Hispanics. But Mr. Trump’s support is expected to draw heavily from those disaffected white voters who lined up behind Mitt Romney in 2012 -- and whom Republicans acknowledge they will need again to recapture the White House in 2016.

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Now, what remains so appealing to many of the white voters who like Mr. Trump is his perceived willingness to tell hard truths about delicate issues -- racial and otherwise -- that, to their mind, the party establishment is too timid to discuss.

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But Mr. Trump also risks alienating from Republicans a crucial bloc of swing voters who lean right on economics but disdain any hint of scapegoating minorities -- not to mention a cross-section of minority voters who are offended by his message.

The Times found a group it has rarely made time for – minority Republicans – to use as another club against Trump.

Some Latino Republican officials said they were dumbfounded by the reluctance of other Republicans to deliver full-throated rebukes of Mr. Trump -- and suggested the debates might provide that opportunity.