Working-class Republicans anxious over a post-Trump party
By Michael Mathes
HERSHEY: Pennsylvanias working-class conservatives see Donald Trump as a savior who can bring back jobs and revolutionize Washington. But should he lose, there is genuine concern about the Republican Party, and whether it can even survive.
The men and women who populate the industrial towns of Pennsylvania and other Rust Belt states were derided by Barack Obama in 2008 as bitter Americans who cling to guns or religion.
Eight years later, with the White House on the line, the slight remains fresh for many in rural parts of the state, who feel increasingly isolated from the decisions made in Washington.
Trump is the provocative real estate mogul who turned politics on its head with an antagonistic, 18-month presidential campaign that bested 16 fellow Republican challengers.
In doing so he left a yawning chasm between the Republican leaders and the millions who embraced a grass-roots movement.
Should Trump win on November 8 the party will be hisa stunning seizure of political power that could change the course of American conservatism for decades.
If he loses, Republicans have major rebuilding and healing ahead.
Some Trump supporters openly ponder the Grand Old Partys demise, and believe that many who were swept up in support for the former reality TV star could abandon the party.
I doubt that theyll go back into the fold, Ken Bleistein, 66, told AFP at a crowded Trump rally Friday in Hershey, Pennsylvania, four days before Election Day.
The retiree said he wouldnt be surprised if conservative Trump supporterswho resent leaders like House Speaker Paul Ryan for turning their backs on the controversial nomineeflee as the party seeks to reassert control over a restive flock.
Pennsylvanians may feel particularly aggrieved. The state has shed manufacturing jobs, and its unemployment rate is higher than the national average.
The state has not voted Republican in a presidential race since 1988. Its rural territory is overwhelmingly conservative, but the heavily Democratic metropolis of Philadelphia has strength in numbers.
Of the dozen voters interviewed in Hershey, all expressed varying degrees of outrage at the Republican Party for refusing to fully endorse Trump, or for failing to follow through on promises like repealing Obamacare once the they gained control of Congress.
Theyve moved to the middle, theyve compromised, and thats really got a lot of conservative people into a tizzy, Roger Springer said at the aptly named American Dream Diner in Harrisburg, Pennsylvanias capital.
I feel we need to go back to our principles and stick up for what we believe is right, said Springer, who runs a potato growers cooperative. He believes Trump is the man to do that.
The 67-year-old Springer believes that calls for revolution and pitchfork demonstrations by infuriated conservatives are blown out of proportion.
But there definitely will be ramifications for the party, he said.
Theres gonna be a revolution! insisted drywall finisher Wayne Hess, 56, as he talked with other Trump supporters in Hershey.But he walked back his rallying cry, stressing that the party would maintain cohesion.
If youre Republican you still stick with Republican, he said.
Im talking about taking the country back. Whatever it takes. Voting doesnt work, he said. He believes that the revolution he predicts will be rallies and uproar.
Military veteran Nathaniel Valentin, 20, also believed change was coming, but not through armed insurrection.
Valentin said hed like to see change through the ballot box.
Its really going to begin with us, he said. Either theyre going to push it away and say this is usurpation, this is tyrannical, or were going to go along with it.
Outraged, and with a tenuous attachment to traditional conservative principles, several Republicans have spoken openly about leaving the party over the leaderships failure to embrace Trump.
One Trump supporter, Attorney Jerry Tarud, 50, doesnt see a mass exodus coming.
Theres nothing else out there, he said succinctly.
But a collective sense of loss and victimhood could fuel Trump supporters into splintering from the party and damage prospects of future presidential victories, said Saladin Ambar, chair of the political science department at Lehigh University.
It may not die and go away like the Whigs, he said, referring to the short lived 19th century party.
But it could die as a relevant party in terms of winning national elections.
Trumps campaign manager Kellyanne Conway refused to consider defeat. She told AFP that the candidate has done his job in unifying the party far more than Republicans who have been reluctant to support him.
As for conservatives thinking of quitting the GOP: They ought not to do that, Conway said. There is not a comfortable place for them in the Democratic Party.
Meanwhile, Logan Sechrist, a 27-year-old welder-fabricator from Lebanon Pennsylvania, is sick of Republican leaders only pretending to understand the struggles of everyday Americans. As middle-class Americans were sitting here getting screwed day in and day out, he said.
If Trump loses, Sechrist expressed worry about a post-election return to the status quo in Washington. -AFP
