(New York) Can an autopsy be performed on a body whose death has not yet been confirmed?
In 2012, Republican leaders had no doubts. After the defeat of Mitt Romney against Barack Obama, president inept in their eyes, they were sure that their party had expired like dominant force on the national scene. Hence their decision to perform an autopsy to determine the causes of the problem and recommend a new approach.
Ten years later, in the wake of the midterm elections, the Republican National Committee announces a new autopsy. Disappointed with the results, its president, Ronna McDaniel, niece of Mitt Romney, wants to know in particular why her party lost the independent vote (by 2 percentage points), which is extremely rare in an election of the kind where this segment of the electorate has a habit of punishing the ruling party in the White House.
However, unlike Mitt Romney’s party 10 years ago, Donald Trump’s is still fighting for its survival. In fact, the co-chairmen of the committee in charge of carrying out the autopsy personify the convulsions which shook the Grand Old Party at the time when the 45e president begins another presidential campaign.
A fascinating document
Henry Barbour, nephew of a former Mississippi governor, is one of the co-chairs. A member of the elite Republican Party, he helped write the report that followed the 2012 autopsy. On the eve of his 10e anniversary, this document remains fascinating. Its publication followed a presidential campaign in which Mitt Romney had proposed the “self-deportation” of illegal immigrants as a solution to illegal immigration.
Widely ridiculed, the proposal had contributed to Mitt Romney’s meager vote harvest among Latinos – 71% of them had preferred Barack Obama.
Also, in their 100-page report published following their in-depth autopsy, Henry Barbour and his colleagues had recommended that the Republican Party be much more than the party of heterosexual white people of a certain age.
“We need to campaign with Hispanic, Black, Asian and gay Americans and demonstrate that we care about them too,” they wrote after holding 3,000 group listening sessions, more than 800 conference calls and meetings. countless polls.
But it was the following passage that was to strike people the most: “Among the measures to be considered in the Hispanic community and beyond, Republicans must adopt and defend comprehensive immigration reform. If we don’t, our party’s appeal will continue to narrow to its base voters. »
The report had been published on March 18, 2013. Two years and three months later, Donald Trump said, in a way, what he thought of the document when announcing his candidacy for the presidency.
He not only promised to build a wall on the southern border, but also called Mexican immigrants “drug dealers, criminals and rapists”.
And he surprised Hillary Clinton by racking up votes from an electorate neglected by the elites of America’s two major parties—working-class whites.
The Republicans obviously learned the lessons of Donald Trump rather than those of Henry Barbour.
Harmeet Dhillon will co-chair the committee put together by Ronna McDaniel. If Henry Barbour represents the Republican elite, this former vice-president of the Republican Party of California is identified with the Trumpist movement. As legal counsel to Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign, she participated in ballot challenges in court.
Some suspect Ronna McDaniel of having chosen her to stay in Donald Trump’s good graces. One thing is certain, Harmeet Dhillon was not cajoled. A few days after her appointment, she announced her intention to dethrone McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee, a position that will be up for grabs next February. Hello, the atmosphere!
And that’s not counting the Republicans who have started to openly attack Donald Trump. They are convinced that the former president has become toxic.
Proof of this is their party’s disappointing performance in the last three national elections — 2018, 2020 and 2022 — which they attribute to the push-back effect Trump and his ilk have had on certain key segments of the electorate.
And they are appalled by the owner of Mar-a-Lago’s recent encounter with anti-Semites, as well as his statement on whether to terminate the Constitution.
“We have to understand that Trump’s endorsement of a candidate is not an incitement to endorse him, but a warning to beware of him,” former George W. Bush strategist Karl Rove told Fox News. after the defeat of Herschel Walker, a candidate recruited and supported by Donald Trump, in the Georgia senatorial election.
The same day, Rove signed in the wall street journal a forum that ended with this sentence: “A Republican Party led by Donald Trump will lose, lose and lose. »
The report following the 2022 autopsy is expected in the middle of next year. He may notice a double irony. Despite Donald Trump’s racist or xenophobic speeches, the Republican Party has seen its votes among blacks and Latinos grow in the last three elections.
The problem is that it continues to lose power in what were once its strongholds, the suburbs, where many older heterosexual white people live.