WASHINGTON—Don’t expect Democrats to take down Donald Trump. If the GOP’s baffled establishment wants to dismiss their party’s billionaire presidential front-runner, it appears they'll have to do it themselves.
Quietly pleased the brash real estate mogul and reality TV star has become the face of the modern-day GOP, Democrats who specialize in opposition research are holding their fire. Some leading Republicans, meanwhile, have grown increasingly concerned by Trump’s staying power, leading to fresh calls for an organized takedown campaign to protect the party’s image heading into 2016.
“At some point, the things he says go from being ‘crazy old Donald Trump’ to defining — this is how Republicans think and feel. And that’s dangerous,” said Katie Packer, who served as 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s deputy campaign manager.
Packer says there is “some rumbling” about a well-funded anti-Trump campaign and offered a wake-up call to Republicans who assume Trump’s candidacy will ultimately collapse. “Folks have to remember that lead changes don’t just happen,” she said. “Something causes them to happen.”
Trump represents exactly the kind of party standard-bearer Republican officials wanted to avoid after a disastrous 2012 election in which minority voters — Hispanics in particular — overwhelmingly abandoned the GOP.
The Republican National Committee concluded in a postelection study the party must adopt a more welcoming and inclusive tone on immigration. Yet Trump’s candidacy is built upon his disdain for immigrants who are living in the country illegally, whom he has repeatedly referred to as dangerous criminals who must be deported en masse.
Democrats couldn’t be happier.
They’re collecting reams of negative information about Trump’s business background. Leading groups such as the Democratic-allied research firm American Bridge have dispatched staff to New York, New Jersey and Delaware in recent weeks to examine Trump-related bankruptcy cases, Security and Exchange Commission filings and the many lawsuits to which the litigious Trump has been a part.
But they’re not planning to release any of it anytime soon. They want Trump around as long as possible.
“The longer Donald Trump is high-fiving Jeb Bush and forcing (Sens.) John McCain and Rob Portman to say they'd back him in a general election, the more he’s making clear the Republican Party’s priorities, and how out of touch they are with American values and middle-class families,” said American Bridge spokesman Ben Ray.
Instead of attacking Trump, the Democratic National Committee is trying to paint the rest of the GOP field with his brush. The party has released a series of Web videos casting Trump’s positions as representative of his competitors, including one in which Trump is shown high-fiving Bush, the former Florida governor.
