OPINION:
No one knows better how not to campaign for president than the chief strategist for Mitt Romney, who blew his very good chance to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. Mr. Romney, a genuinely nice guy, forgot baseball legend Leo Durocher’s famous admonition that “nice guys finish last.”
“Marco Rubio had been told that he’s the future of the party,” says Stuart Stevens, who was the man who devised strategy for Mitt Romney. “But it’s not enough to say, ’I have a great future, vote for me.’ You have to do more than use your biography. You’ve got to connect your ideas in a real way to the economy. People ended up walking out of Rubio rallies misty-eyed and out of Trump rallies with blood in their eyes.”
Blood in the eye always beats mist in the eye, and this is difficult for a Republican to understand because he’s always afraid of getting a mild rebuke from the house committee for raising his voice on the tennis court. Brawling is for Democrats, who wrote the book on campaign brawling. Mr. Dooley, the loyal party man created by author Peter Finley Dunne, said he needed the brass knuckles in his back pocket because he was on his way to a Democratic unity meeting.
The Republican primary campaign is not over, not quite, but the party will soon have to call a unity meeting, preferably without brass knuckles. Ted Cruz and John Kasich have time to get in a few more licks, but soon the nomination will be Donald Trump’s to lose.
Winning three of four major primaries this week, in Illinois, North Carolina and Missouri, is a giant leap, if not for mankind, at least for the Donald. If he had taken Ohio as well the race would be well and truly over, but John Kasich was a favorite son, after all, and humiliating a sitting governor in his own state is something that Republicans and even Democrats are loathe to do. Several Midwestern primaries are still to come, and Mr. Kasich and “the Republican establishment” still have dreams of stopping Mr. Trump in a brokered convention, which will only be possible if he arrives in Cleveland for the convention with fewer than 1,237 delegates. A brokered convention is possible, but not probable. The modern conventions of both parties are scripted to be as boring as possible, which is why the television networks, which are in the business of entertainment, not citizenship, have all but abandoned them.
Mr. Trump, having made his point that the old way of running a Republican campaign is a recipe for failure, must now find a way to tone it down and lower the volume without alarming his red-meat following. His abundant critics in the party have already begun to tone down their hysteria — no more descriptions of him as “a low-life” — and have begun the hard task of reconciling themselves to what may be the inevitable, if it comes to that, which is not at all certain. The fat lady is still taking it easy in the wings, not yet ready to sing.
The Republican senators, worried most about their own re-election prospects, are looking to their leader for tips on what to say about Mr. Trump. Sen. Mitch McConnell has said some harsh things about him, accusing him of encouraging the hoodlums who broke up his rally in Chicago, but he, too, may be trying to temper his wrath, such as it is. He should remind his troops that discretion is still the better part of wisdom. A campaign is no time to encourage wimpery.
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