Dr Frankenstein has regrets

Created
Sun, 10/09/2023 - 05:30
Updated
Sun, 10/09/2023 - 05:30
The NY Times on rich GOPer hand wringing: On Labor Day, Eric Levine, a New York lawyer and Republican fund-raiser, sent an email to roughly 1,500 donors, politicians and friends. “I refuse to accept the proposition that Donald Trump is the ‘inevitable’ Republican nominee for President,” he wrote. “His nomination would be a disaster for our party and our country.” Many of the Republican Party’s wealthiest donors share that view, and the growing sense of urgency about the state of the G.O.P. presidential primary race. Mr. Trump’s grip on the party’s voters is as powerful as ever, with polls in Iowa and New Hampshire last month putting him at least 25 percentage points above his nearest rivals. That has left major Republican donors — whose desires have increasingly diverged from those of conservative voters — grappling with the reality that the tens of millions of dollars they have spent to try to stop the former president, fearing he poses a mortal threat to their party and the country, may already be a sunk cost. Interviews with more than a dozen Republican donors and their allies revealed hand-wringing, magical thinking, calls to arms and, for some, fatalism. Several of them did not want to be identified by name out of a fear of political repercussions or a desire to stay in the good graces of any eventual Republican nominee, including Mr. Trump. “If things don’t change quickly, people are going to despair,” Mr. Levine said in an interview. He is among…