And I don't blame them. Donald Trump, to borrow an expression that is utterly silly in its other context, really is a "statist infiltrator" trying to hijack the Republican Party on behalf of its Democrat enemies. I'm just (1) unsure how it is that this isn't the job of the candidates already in the race - who, aside from Ben Carson, have been doing an abysmal job of it - and (2) how an organization that got so completely blindsided by Trumpmania in the first place thinks itself capable of taking out the pompadoured slumlord after the fact:
Don't expect Democrats to take down Donald Trump. If the GOP's baffled establishment wants to dismiss their party's billionaire presidential co-front-runner, it appears they'll have to do it themselves.
Quietly pleased the brash real estate mogul and reality TV star has become the face of the modern-day GOP, Democrats who specialize in opposition research are holding their fire.
Anybody still think Trump and the Dems aren't in cahoots on this plot?
Some leading Republicans, meanwhile, have grown increasingly concerned by Trump's staying power, leading to fresh calls for an organized takedown campaign to protect the party's image heading into 2016.
"At some point, the things he says go from being 'crazy old Donald Trump' to defining — this is how Republicans think and feel. And that's dangerous," said Katie Packer, who served as 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney's deputy campaign manager.
Indeed. But then, that is, strategically speaking, the core point of his candidacy, to animate every caustic stereotype of the GOP Democrats have ever promulgated.
But as is their want and instinct, the "establishment" is completely obtuse as to what that image needs to be as well as the party hierarchy's image in the eyes of its own base:
Trump represents exactly the kind of party standard-bearer Republican officials wanted to avoid after a disastrous 2012 election in which minority voters — Hispanics in particular — overwhelmingly abandoned the GOP.
It's more like they never came back to the GOP, actually. But that was more because Barack Obama was still at the top of the ballot - as was Mitt Romney - than anything else.
The Republican National Committee concluded in a post-election study the party must adopt a more welcoming and inclusive tone on immigration.
No, no, no, no. no. That's buying straight into Democrat/Media Complex propaganda and its, frankly, racist "identity politics" notion that, in this case, all Hispanics are for radical border erasure and the destruction of national sovereignty and citizenship. Such pointless pandering on the Democrats' terms has never made any significant inroads with Hispanics or blacks before them and it never will. In addition to which is that the GOP base and the bulk of independents have been adamantly anti-illegal immigration for at least the past decade, their passion level has been steadily increasing, and exploded after Barack Obama illegally and despotically imposed his Immigration Proclamation only two weeks after O's Border Crisis fueled the latest GOP midterm election blowout. The "establishment" has obstinately continued to ignore this in favor of its Donk-Lite immigration policy obsession, generating such a raging level of capillary-bursting grassroots frustration that a lot of Republican primary voters have taken leave of their senses, thrown their principles out the window, and are bent on vengefully wiping out their own party's leadership to the exclusion of all else. It consequently left the door wide open for a demagogic charlatan like Donald Trump to come along and exploit it to opposition ends. Which he did and continues to do, and it has put him on top.
Again, I don't blame the GOP hierarchy for wanting to stop Trump. He is a mortal threat to the party and the country in terms of getting back the White House to begin the long, hard road back towards sanity, much less Christianity, conservatism, constitutionalism, capitalism, common sense, and averting global nuclear war. But he only had this opportunity because the party wasn't listening to its core supporters on immigration, and any take-down attempt that continues to tune-out the base is just going to push them deeper into his camp.
"Ah, that renowned GOP 'establishment' obtusity".
Meanwhile, here's how confident The Donald has become:
GOP presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have been trading jabs over the past several days, but Trump, the current co-front-runner, says he would support Bush if he gets the GOP nod.
"To close the circle on the feud with Jeb, if Jeb wins the nomination, will you support him?" Sean Hannity asked Trump Tuesday on his Fox News show Hannity.
"Absolutely yes. I would absolutely support him," Trump responded. "He's a good person, he's a good man. I would support him."
Trump does not speak well of rivals and competitors that remain bona fide threats to him. If he believed that Jeb Bush was anything but dead meat and his campaign finished, there is no way that he would have promised to support Bush III if he somehow won the nomination. To the contrary, he'd be Tweeting out a flurry of "Jeb is Howdy-Doody" jokes today.,
As much as I distrust and detest Donald Trump, the fact still remains that the GOP "establishment" brought his meteoric rise on themselves, and they're not going to get themselves out of this self-created mess by doubling down on their grievous mistakes. Not by a long shot.
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