TO THE EDITOR:
Let’s count the ways in which the Republican Party’s nominee for president, Donald Trump, runs afoul of the expectations of our 18th-century Founders.
Themselves aristocrats, the Constitution’s architects structured America’s new republican-style government to incorporate all parts of the society.
A popularly elected president would replace the king, appointed aristocratic members of the senate, selected by state legislatures, would provide political stability and members of the House of Representatives, elected by mainly white, better-off male property owners, would reflect the interests of the disenfranchised, marginalized masses.
How did Trump gain the Republican Party’s nomination for president? Was he the choice of the party’s elite? Did he work his way up the party ladder? Did he gain valuable public experience through extensive prior government service?
Not at all.
He simply swept the established Republican Party primary process with his bombastic call to make America great again.
And who fell under his spell? Grass-roots, registered Republican voters —the very segment of society the Founders feared as fickle and prone to fall for the call of a despot.
For the Founders, grass-root party primaries to select a presidential candidate would have been a ridiculous, risky idea. They knew full well how poorly such a process might turn out and how a candidate like Donald Trump might co-opt the process.
