The GOP’s establishment guys have found a silver lining to the dark cloud over Paris:
After the terrorist attacks on an American ally, Republican elders think their party’s flirtation with inexperience is nearing its end.
The reemergence of foreign policy atop the Republican agenda will force voters to reevaluate the outsider candidates, particularly as both [Donald] Trump and [Ben] Carson display a lack of knowledge about national security and the terrorist threat, party stalwarts said.
The losers are going to be Donald Trump and Ben Carson on national security, said Katon Dawson, the former chairman of the South Carolina GOP. “As the Republican base sobers up, they are the two, if this story lasts a long time, it’s going to hurt.”
… Fred Malek, who has advised multiple Republican presidents and is not affiliated with any contender this cycle, said the inexperience Trump and Carson reveal in their rhetoric will drive GOP primary voters toward another candidate.
… The more exposure [Ben Carson] gets, said Doug Gross, a longtime Iowa Republican, the more it’s clear that he’s “not ready to be president. Just from a policy standpoint, he’s not prepared to deal with issues.
Longtime Republicans don’t have nearly as clear a theory of Trump’s downfall.
“It’s always easier to predict how this ends up than how [we] get there,” said Stuart Stevens, who was Mitt Romney’s chief strategist. But as for Trump, “I don’t think he wins a single primary… I think he gets out.”
Read the rest here.
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