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WASHINGTON — As the Republican strategist Brian Walsh watched the nonstop …
On Hillary Clinton’s Rough Day, Republicans Rue Missed Chance
WASHINGTON
— As the Republican strategist Brian Walsh watched the nonstop cable
news coverage Tuesday from his K Street office, he thought he was seeing
the stuff of his party’s dreams.
A
week after former President Bill Clinton lit a political firestorm by
strolling onto Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch’s plane for a private
conversation, the director of the F.B.I. announced that the bureau would not recommend criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s
handling of classified information. And then, just three hours later,
President Obama and Mrs. Clinton emerged arm in arm from Air Force One in North Carolina for their first joint campaign rally.
But
this politically pregnant convergence of events was not met with a
battalion of well-credentialed Republican law enforcement and national
security officials flooding the television airwaves to raise questions
about the inquiry and hammer Mrs. Clinton. Nor was there any
made-for-social-media video contrasting what the F.B.I. director, James
B. Comey, called Mrs. Clinton’s “extremely careless” handling of 110
classified emails with the former secretary of state’s shifting
explanations over the last year about her use of a private email server.
There
were not even any talking points sent to leading Republican members of
Congress offering guidance on the best lines of attack against Mrs.
Clinton in the aftermath of what was a remarkably harsh assessment of
her conduct.
“Instead we’re relying on somebody who’s tweeting with exclamation points,” said Mr. Walsh, referring to Donald J. Trump’s initial response to Mr. Comey’s news conference.
Mr.
Trump’s improvisational response to the conclusion of an F.B.I.
investigation against his opponent that had been months in the making
illustrated the lingering deficiencies of his skeletal campaign and the
lack of high-profile Republicans with foreign policy experience who are
willing to speak on his behalf.
2016 Election Polls
For
many in the party it also was a painful reminder of what could have
been — how a different standard-bearer could have capitalized on one of
the most difficult days Mrs. Clinton has faced as a candidate. For the
Republican establishment, the months since Mr. Trump began closing in on
the presidential nomination have been a season of dismay and
frustration: Handed a historically weak Democratic opponent to run
against, the party’s voters responded by nominating a candidate even
more unpopular and toxic than Mrs. Clinton.
Continue reading the main story
But
there have been few days during this cycle of disbelief in which the
sense of regret has been as palpable for Republican strategists and
policy makers as when Mr. Comey jolted the political world back to life
after a long holiday weekend.
“Imagine
Jeb Bush looking disappointed and talking about the importance of
following the rules and a society ruled by law with a government that is
held accountable,” said Kori Schake, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover
Institution and a national security aide in George W. Bush’s
administration who is now backing Mrs. Clinton. “This should be a really
great moment for a Republican nominee. But there’s no way in the world
Donald Trump could pull that off.”
Mr.
Trump’s campaign did, in fact, issue a longer statement regarding Mrs.
Clinton’s email use beyond his initial assessment of “very very unfair!”
and he used his own rally Tuesday night in North Carolina to assail his
Democratic rival. “We are talking about the safety of our people,” he
told a crowd in Raleigh. “The laws are very explicit. Stupidity is not a
reason that you’re going to be innocent.”
Graphic: What We Know About Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server
Yet
for many in his own party, there was deep angst over the possibility
that they could lose to a Democratic candidate who was just deemed by
one of the country’s most highly respected law enforcement officials to
have presided over a State Department whose lackadaisical security
culture invited foreign hackers.
“He’s
making somebody who should be sitting in a jail cell look like the sane
choice for president,” said John Noonan, a former Air Force officer who
served as a national security aide to Mitt Romney in 2012 and in Mr.
Bush’s campaign this year. “This should have been a two-foot putt. But
Republicans never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And that’s
what we’ve done.”
What
was especially exasperating to so many in the party was that the turn
of events over the last week was only the latest opportunity in a month
for Mr. Trump to go on the offensive. The Islamic State-inspired rampage
in Orlando, Fla., and Britain’s vote to leave the European Union
offered him prime political moments, but he unnecessarily inserted himself into each story and saw no improvement in his standing in the polls.
“Trump overtakes news cycles at every turn,” complained Mr. Walsh. “My God, he was on his golf course saying what a good thing the pound’s collapse
would be for his bottom line.” (Some Republicans feared Mr. Trump was
again frittering away an opportunity when, rather than focusing entirely
on the F.B.I. probe, he used his speech on Tuesday night to offer praise for Saddam Hussein.)
However,
in a campaign year animated by a voter revolt against Washington and
the perceived self-dealing of an all-too-cozy political class there may
be no more of a gift than what Mr. Comey delivered to an outsider
candidate like Mr. Trump, whose jeremiads against what he calls a
“rigged” system have been central to his improbable rise.
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“This
is an example of what voters are totally fed up with,” said Liesl
Hickey, the former executive director of the House Republican campaign
arm, alluding to the F.B.I.’s decision to not recommend charges.
But
Ms. Hickey, pointing out that Mr. Trump refuses to release his income
tax returns, noted that the candidate also bore his own baggage on the
very argument he is making against Mrs. Clinton. “Americans also think
the system is rigged for the top 1 percent, so they think the system
could be rigged for him, too,” she said.
Whether
it is with his taxes, his pronouncements or his willingness to raise
money and create a sophisticated organization, Mr. Trump has gleefully
flouted convention.
“He
doesn’t think traditional campaigns matter as much anymore, that he can
do this on social media,” said Jim Merrill, a New Hampshire-based
Republican strategist. “But the truth is, running a campaign still
matters a great deal. And if we had nominated anyone else we’d be up on
Hillary. But we’re down because we’ve got an incompetent candidate who
has alienated large swaths of the electorate.”
For
his part, Mr. Walsh was just flabbergasted that his party had a nominee
whose war room often seems to begin and end with the candidate’s
Twitter feed.
“Why
would he rush out a tweet as his primary response?” wondered Mr. Walsh.
“He’s just demonstrating he is unable or unwilling to appear
presidential at moments like this, when it’s required.”
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