GOP MEMBERS IN DISMAY AT TRUMP’S APPROACH TO FOREIGN POLICY

…Preparation for the highly controversial Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

 

The fighting on the floor from the “stop Trump” group at the GOP convention on night 1, is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump acted somewhat “presidential” as he expressed "unyielding support" for France and Turkey after the horrendous violence in both countries.  But as usual, Trump did not explain what his “unyielding support” meant to him, and then he immediately ripped into rival Hillary Clinton for leading America down a "horrible path."

 

And once again, his bold comment about her “horrible path” was also not explained.

 

Trump really believes that he is not required to explain anything in detail, of how he will achieve his bodacious claims, or what he really means when he make ridiculous statements.

 

Now, with the important week of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and with Donald Trump now being responsible for taking over Republican foreign policy, the majority of the senior party leaders will be required to remark on Trump’s bazaar eccentric views about the United States’ role in the world.

 

Some GOP leaders are already in total dismay at Trump’s strange approach to foreign policy and national security.

 

Even though a team of foreign policy and national security experts has meet with the candidate on a regular basis, because Trump makes his own decisions on what he says about these issue, the experts are not engaged in offering positions for Trump to support or announce. 

 

 

The process of dealing with Trump is according to two advisers, Trump’s foreign policy aides just wait for him to say something in public about an international issue, and then they craft a policy around whatever he said. The details of how Trump’s statements fit into his overall international vision are therefore worked out after the fact.

 

It’s kind of like a game of “Trump opens mouth, backup team then responds”.

 

But many times his “team” is left with no understanding of where Trump actually stands, so that they can clarify it for the public.

 

As an example, Trump seriously struggled to respond to the attempted military coup in Turkey.  All he had to say was, “We wish them well…Hopefully it will all work out.”  . . . .then silence.  His campaign personnel didn’t know what to do with a comment like that.  They actually had to admit that he didn’t really have any real knowledge or his position on the issue.  Obviously, for his team, this is a continuing and on-going problem.

 

What is even more bazaar, is that this is forcing the party leaders to take on a similar approach to Trump as their prime candidate.

 

There are still dozens of high-level Republicans that will never support or endorse Donald Trump.  These same Republicans are being forced to accept his unique ideas about his foreign policy vision as being totally acceptable.  Even if they have no idea of what his ideas about foreign policy are in the first place.

 

Unfortunately, this many times means as is always with Trump, the party leaders can only project their support for Trump’s policies in the most broadest of terms.

 

Senator Tom Cotton (R-AK) put this approach best when he stated what he felt about Trump’s national security policies.  Per the senator, “Donald Trump wants America to once again be tough and strong and hard-nosed in the world. That’s part of a long and bipartisan tradition that has largely been abandoned during the Obama administration.”

 

Senator Cotton speech on the first convention night has been stated that it will focus on Hillary and the Benghazi debacle.  However, the senator is not in line with Trump on a number of Trump’s ideas such as Trump’s call for the United States to reduce its commitment to NATO.

 

It should be interesting to hear what Senator Cotton has to say as he has said ““I am a surrogate for no man,” and “I’ll be there to make the case for Republican ideas.”  That sure sounds like someone that will not be agreeing with their candidate, but we’ll just have to see how it all turns out.

 

It’s going to be interesting to see how some attendees deal with their differences with their candidate,

 

Senator David Perdue (R-GA), for example, has said that Trump’s trade policies are in line with his own.  But the senator supports multiple trade agreements that Trump totally opposes.

 

On the other hand, Perdue is not concerned about Trump’s statements of praising Russia’s Vladimir Putin, or his strange comments about how Saddam Hussein was “so good” at killing terrorists, which is a totally false statement.

 

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) is attempting to lead the candidate in the right direction and he has taken on the leadership of Trump’s National Security Advisory Team.   Sessions will also be speaking at the convention.

 

But from what the scuttlebutt says, is that many GOP senators have given up in trying to get Trump to sound like a traditional Republican.  Despite having worked with Trump for months, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Bob Corker (R-TN), will not be speaking at the convention.  This was decided after the senator from Tennessee took himself out of contention for becoming Trump’s running mate.  Corker obviously realized that he could not be the traditional kind of VP candidate that Trump will need between now and November.  There were just too many holes between Corker’s beliefs and Trump’s.

 

More hawkish Republican senators, including John McCain (R-AZ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), are not going to the convention at all, preferring to concentrate on their election campaigns.

 

However, much of the rise of Trump comes from those in the GOP that have wanted an America-first policy. For them, Trump’s nomination is a long-awaited and welcome shift in how the party thinks and speaks about topics such as trade, energy and national security.

 

“I represent a part of the country that was absolutely devastated by NAFTA,” Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) has stated. “Donald Trump shows up as someone who is thinking exactly as I am.”

 

But Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump during the primaries, warned that convention-goers shouldn’t expect a lot of detailed foreign policy delineations on the convention stage.  As we all know, if that’s what you want, Donald Trump is mostly ignorant on the details of those issue that a truly qualified nominee would normally have.

 

But with all the unity against Hillary Clinton, most Republicans are overlooking Trump’s shallowness and incompetence on foreign policy. Their party may have to live with the consequences of that opportunism for many years to come.

 

The fighting on the floor of the GOP convention on the first night will just be the beginning of the problems that the Republicans are going to have with a nominee like Donald Trump.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016