National security

GOP leaders: National security will end Carson and Trump campaigns

By Katie Glueck and Daniel Strauss

Donald Trump and Ben Carson have demonstrated more staying power than anyone predicted. But now, 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 Trump and 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."

Indeed, in interviews with current and former GOP chairs, veteran operatives, lobbyists and strategists, the long-held conviction that neither Trump nor Carson will win the Republican nomination has only strengthened since the attacks in Paris last week.

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 severity of the attacks in Paris crystallize in people’s minds the importance of having somebody in the commander-in-chief spot who has made the kinds of decisions, gone through the kind of decision-making process, that an experienced leader has,” Malek said.

Carson in particular is vulnerable on security and foreign policy issues, Republican leaders say. The pediatric neurosurgeon, who has no previous political experience, has already stunned with a meandering answer about the Middle East in last week’s debate, before the attacks. He drew criticism in an earlier debate for suggesting that American brainpower was a substitute for military force and he shocked many by saying he had intelligence that the White House did not about Chinese forces engaging in Syria.

Worse yet for the candidate, two of Carson’s senior advisors on Tuesday told The New York Times, on the record, that their candidate was struggling to understand the Middle East. Intense tutoring, they told the paper, was having little effect.

Carson has tried to correct course in recent days. On Friday, he said his message to Vladimir Putin is, “We are a peaceful country, but we are not a marshmallow.” On Monday, on social media and in a press conference, sought to highlight his plan to take on ISIS and articulate a broader, more cogent foreign policy.

But GOP insiders say they aren't impressed, and think the foreign policy shift will take a visible toll on Carson, especially in next month’s debate, which many expect will be filled with security questions.

“Carson I’m not so worried about,” said Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP who puts his overall concern level about Trump and Carson at a five, on a scale of 10. “I respect him for his accomplishments in life, but he is completely unprepared to be president of the United States, and that will take care of itself at the polls.”

The more exposure he 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.”

Others agree that he will falter, even as some acknowledge that all predictions of his demise have been wrong thus far. Truly, Trump’s resilience -- even after attacking prisoners of war, immigrants and even Iowans -- has flummoxed and alarmed party leaders.

Foreign policy-minded GOP veterans call Trump an amateur on the issue and say he should be pressed for more policy specifics. But they acknowledge that the fresh focus on security will not be as damaging in the short term to Trump, who can better rouse crowds with his “bomb-the-sh**-out-of-ISIS” rhetoric, as it is to Carson.

Yet, these party leaders and strategists said there’s no feeling of panic.

“It’s too early for anyone to be hand-wringing about any particular candidate,” said Matt Strawn, the former chairman of the Iowa GOP, speaking more broadly but offering a sentiment shared by many interviewed. “Both Iowa and New Hampshire historically make their decisions late.”

While Republican insiders argue that nominating Trump would lose the GOP the White House, they maintain that it’s a nightmare that will never come to pass.

"If this was the middle of March and we had a Republican candidate racking up win after win after win in states and we looked like we were free falling into losing not only the White House but also the Senate and seats in the House, yeah, there would be every reason for the party to be deeply concerned about the direction of the country," said Henry Barbour, a Republican National Committeeman from Mississippi. “But it's November.”

Experienced operatives keep adjusting the timeline for Trump’s decline: several months ago, some campaigns and Republican insiders said the debate would get more serious around Thanksgiving and hurt his standing in the polls but now they’re looking out to January, even February.

“I’m not totally discounting that this is a real problem,” said Cullen, who now acknowledges he could see Trump winning some early contests. “But I also think that in the fullness of time this will eventually work itself out.”

But most of the Republicans interviewed said Trump in particular doesn’t have the organization or appeal to last deep into the cycle (not to mention that should he show signs of actually winning any contests, plenty of Republicans are prepared to write big checks to a Stop Trump campaign).

“I’m not too worried about it,” said Charlie Black, another longtime adviser to Republican presidents and presidential campaigns. “Trump’s been losing a little steam since Labor Day, when he was up around 30, now he’s in the low 20s. Carson is as high as he’ll ever be, just because he’s beginning to demonstrate he doesn’t have real good knowledge of the issues. Either of them might win a primary or something, but that’s it.”

One indication of impending panic would be a mad scramble to organize an explicit anti-Trump effort. Dawson, who had been looking to form just such a super PAC, hasn’t found a donor yet.

"I specifically did not find the right donor to get me to go to that effort. And then Trump's numbers started moving down, from the 30s to the 20s," Dawson said.

This all changes as the primaries near. If Trump is still on track to win one of the first four voting states, the GOP establishment will face perhaps its final moment to rally around another candidate.

“The (Paris) attacks proved that a month is an infinite amount of political time, and that the shape of a campaign can flip dramatically in an instant,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a veteran Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration. “And for that reason I believe it's a fair reading of the evidence to say that people don't get serious until, if, and when they vote. And so I want to see what the polls in New Hampshire look like a week, three days, the day before the actual primaries are held...If Donald is at 42 percent in New Hampshire a day before the primary, you may see the establishment freak out. But I don't think today.”

The Trump and Carson campaigns would not comment for this story.