According to Michael Reagan, political analyst and son of President Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump must make amends with his vanquished rivals if he wants to defeat Hillary Clinton in November. Appearing on CNN with Don Lemon Thursday night, Reagan said it was time for a Republican reconciliation.
“If I was Donald Trump, tomorrow I’d call Jeb Bush and say, ‘I’m sorry about what I said about you and some of your family,” said Reagan. “I would call Ted Cruz and say, ‘I’m really sorry about what I said about your father and what I said about you’ and start getting those people on board and supporting and getting behind Donald Trump.”
Reagan read Trump’s “regret” speech as a step in the right direction.
“What Donald Trump was doing was reaching out to the Bushes, reaching out to the Cruzes, reaching out to the Hispanic community – the area he needs to go into to win,” he said. “He’s going to need those votes in order to get across that finish line.”
Hey, you forgot about Little Marco!
Let’s assume that Reagan is offering this advice from a purely strategical standpoint. What good, then, could these apologies possibly do? Jeb Bush isn’t stalking around his Florida home, cursing Trump for questioning his energy levels. He is watching in horror as the New York billionaire sets fire to the Republican Party as it existed under his family’s White House dominance. No “apology” is going to make up for the fact that Trump is actively burying the neoconservative movement and taking the GOP in a new direction. For Trump to bring Bush on board, he would have to change nearly every element of his platform. That’s not going to happen.
With Cruz, it’s trickier. Trump and the Texas senator are more alike than different when it comes to their views on America’s future, but any chance of a reconciliation may have been squandered when Cruz publicly snubbed Trump at the Republican National Convention last month. Cruz had a chance to be the better man and put the good of the country ahead of his personal animosity; he chose not to. And if he was just hedging his bets in the event of a catastrophic Trump loss, who wants him around anyway?
Readers may remember President Obama’s Apology Tour from 2009, where Mr. Hope & Change assured each of our allies that the days of American arrogance were over. Patriots were aghast at this shamelessness; who else in this vast world was going to stand against Islamic terrorism and rogue dictators? Regardless of our mistakes, the U.S. president should never be out there making the country – or himself – look weak and servile.
That won’t be a problem under a Trump administration because the man operates from strength. Apologies have their place, but the American people don’t want to see Donald Trump subjugate himself before Cruz, Bush, or any other Republican politician. If they want apologies – if they want to be a part of this great American political revolution – then the olive branches should come from their trees.
