Nominating Donald Trump probably won’t change the Republican Party, but putting him atop the ticket will damage it.
All the channels through which he could influence the future of the GOP will be closed to him. Trump does not lead an organized movement — indeed, his own campaign cannot be characterized as organized. He is detested by party leaders and viewed with concern by the GOP electorate. He will be even less loved when he leads the ticket to defeat.
A Fox News poll found more than half of Republicans wish someone other than Trump had won the nomination, with larger majorities viewing him as “hot-headed” and “obnoxious.”
After 2016, the billionaire will be an unwelcome figure in most Republican circles, and he will not have spawned serious “look-a-like” candidates in this or future elections.
By December, the mantle of party leadership will have been passed back to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Trumpism will be well on its way to mere history.
He won’t even be invited to attend the 2020 Republican National Convention, let alone be granted a speaking role.
But Trump’s disappearance from the Republican stage does not mean his party will have escaped unscathed.
Quite the contrary. The damage he’s causing will be real and long lasting — and I’m not even going to discuss Democrats who will take office who would not have been able to without Trump.
Trump has certainly done substantial harm to the Republican brand in the Hispanic community.
Serious Republicans know that winning the White House requires them doing better with this growing segment of the electorate.
The Republican National Committee’s post-2012 autopsy recognized this need, and its single policy recommendation was that Republicans back comprehensive immigration reform.
Instead, Donald Trump only put the Hispanic vote further out of reach, just like former California Gov. Pete Wilson.
In his first gubernatorial run, Wilson narrowly beat then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein while garnering 47 percent of the Hispanic vote.
By 1994, worried about his prospects, Wilson tried to run up his numbers with whites by bashing immigrants, going so far as to put a notoriously anti-Hispanic measure, known as Proposition 187, on the ballot.
That year, his share of the Hispanic vote fell an extraordinary 22 points, to 25 percent. His gambit had a short-term political payoff, with Wilson capturing 62 percent of the white vote, which, back then, was enough to win the race.
But he did so at the cost of alienating this growing population for the long term and helping move California from a swing state into the deep-blue base it is today.
In 2012, when GOP nominee Mitt Romney was talking about voluntary deportation, just 18 percent of Hispanics told Latino Decisions pollsters that the GOP was hostile toward their community. By November 2015, before Trump even had the chance to start winning, that number swelled to 45 percent, with another 39 percent saying Republicans don’t care much about them.
But Hispanics are not the only segment Trump is alienating on behalf of the GOP.
Asian Americans, another rapidly growing segment, have also been turned off to the Republican Party, importantly because of Trump’s exclusionary rhetoric.
In just the last two years, Asian Americas have become a net 15 points more unfavorable toward the GOP, while favorability toward Democrats increased by a net of 21 points.
Of course, Trump is pinning his hopes on white voters. But here too he has damaged the GOP with a crucial segment: white college graduates.
Barack Obama lost these voters by 9 and 5 points in his two elections, respectively. Hillary Clinton now leads among them by 12 points.
With Trump having damaged the Republican brand among both minorities and elements of the white community, the consequences of his candidacy will reverberate for a long time to come.
Republicans gathering in Cleveland face a fateful decision. If they choose Trump, they probably won’t lose their party, but their party will lose a lot of elections.
Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982. Current clients include the minority leader of the Senate and the Democratic whip in the House.