Donald Trump is the Democrats' Trojan Horse, inserted into the GOP presidential primaries to sabotage any chance of the party's regaining the White House and retaining control of Congress in 2016 by poisoning the American electorate against it. I've been shouting this from the wilderness for the past six months. Now everybody else, as is so oftentimes the case, is coming around to echo me.
GOP pols:
Many leading Republican officials, strategists and donors now say they fear that Mr. Trump’s nomination would lead to an electoral wipeout, a sweeping defeat that could undo some of the gains Republicans have made in recent congressional, state and local elections. But in a party that lacks a true leader or anything in the way of consensus — and with the combative Mr. Trump certain to scorch anyone who takes him on — a fierce dispute has arisen about what can be done to stop his candidacy and whether anyone should even try…
“It would be an utter, complete and total disaster,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, himself a presidential candidate who has tangled with Mr. Trump, said of his rival’s effect on lower-tier Republican candidates. “If you’re a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, you’re going to have a hard time being president of the United States, and you’re going to do irreparable damage to the party.”…
“There is not a bit of confusion among our members that if Donald Trump is the nominee, we’re going to get wiped out,” a prominent Republican senator said about Mr. Trump’s effect on Senate races in States such as New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The conservative punditocracy:
“Couldn’t vote for Trump, couldn’t vote for Hillary,” Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol told the Daily Caller in an email…
“We’ve just experienced a seven-year tutorial on the disastrous impact of a chief executive who’s unable to work effectively with Congress and unwilling to seek consensus,” [Michael] Medved said. “Unfortunately, Trump’s imperial ego makes Obama’s surly intransigence look as accommodating as Mr. Rogers’ neighborliness.”…
Radio host Glenn Beck may have been the first notable conservative to declare his inability to support Trump as the nominee back in August.
Captain Ed attempts to remind us yet again of how unpopular Trump is with the general electorate - even moreso than Hillary herself:
This dynamic should present Republicans with a golden opportunity in 2016. Democrats will nominate Hillary Clinton, whose long track record in Washington and deep connection to the Obama administration makes her a continuity candidate at a time when much of the electorate — Republican and Democrat alike — is clamoring for change. [Mrs.] Clinton’s personal negatives, especially on trust and honesty, make her a strikingly flawed candidate. Unlike Obama, Reagan, and her own husband, there is little about [Mrs.] Clinton that reflects an aspirational identity or a change from the past.
Many of the GOP candidates provide a near-perfect contrast to [Mrs.] Clinton. Think about how Carson’s soft-spoken mien and his inspirational life story stack up against Clinton[oid] cronyism, or how a new vision articulated by the younger Rubio and Cruz would look compared to more of the same Clinton[oid] politics. These candidates could plausibly offer a restless electorate an emotional connection to a new idea of what America is. …
Trump seems intent on focusing on a narrow brand of anger and celebrity fandom. Where Romney downplayed his wealth, Trump brags about it. He denigrates his opponents and his critics in personal terms. On the campaign trail, Trump mugs for the crowd while belittling a Carson anecdote about an attempted stabbing that led Carson to faith for redemption. Trump has also made a number of claims that stretch credulity with everyone except Trump’s followers. The most recent of these controversies prompted the Weekly Standard‘s Stephen Hayes to remark on Fox News on Monday that “fact-checking Donald Trump is like picking up after a dog with diarrhea … [there] just isn’t much point.”
Is Trump how [Republicans] sees [them]sel[ves]? Is Trump how America wants to see itself?
Trump has proven resilient, and he’s not dumb. At some point, he will have to figure out how to offer a vision that isn’t all about himself. Or, hopefully, the GOP will find a candidate that can beat Trump to the nomination. Because if Republicans fail, and Trump succeeds, the same electorate that couldn’t find a connection to Romney will go right back to choosing continuity in November 2016, and keep the Republicans out of the White House for another four years. [emphases added]
The "utter, complete and total disaster" Senator Grahamnesty was referring to above. And you can't convince me that that isn't the whole point of the Trump candidacy. Either he sabotages the GOP by running a third-party spoiler campaign, or he actually hijacks the Republican nomination and guarantees a Hillary presidency, or even he actually won next November, he'd be a POTUS without a party and actually send the GOP the way of the Whigs. Regardless, he is no Republican and he is most definitely serving Democrat interests.
And that might wind up being the case even if his primary campaign collapses and he were to do quietly into that proverbial good night:
How many Republican voters decide to boycott a Trump nomination will depend partly on how unified party brokers are behind him. Would Marco Rubio campaign eagerly for Trump in Florida? Would John Kasich do so in Ohio? How about Cory Gardner in Colorado? But maybe it’s unfair to single Trump out on that point, as some of his supporters pretty clearly have decided that not every Republican contender this year would be acceptable to them as nominee either. Cruz might be, but what about Rubio? What percentage of Trump fans would rather stay home, even at the risk of making Hillary Clinton president, then pull the lever for a guy whose claim to fame in the Senate is championing a bad amnesty bill? The legacy of Trumpmania may be this: No matter who ends up being nominated, divisions inside the party are now sufficiently bitter that some meaningful part of the base is staying home. Whether it’s Trump or someone else, you’re fighting the Democrats next year short-handed. [emphasis added]
I did say back in the summer that the GOP, with its Tea Party-driven civil war against the "establishment," was ripe for the pickings for an opposition mole to cannonball their way into the race and play the perfect demagogue to exploit that unchecked, irrational grassroots anger. We are now that much closer to the endgame that one would have thought TPers above all feared the most: a 2016 general election where the choice is between a liberal Democrat and....a liberal Democrat in disguise.
2012 was driven by Barack Obama's IRSgate oppression; but in 2016, Tea Partiers may have nobody to blame but themselves.
Not that they won't blame the "establishment" anyway, of course.
UPDATE: Now Trump is arguing for deliberately targeting jihadists' families - not as unavoidable collateral damage, but as designated targets.
I'd rest my case, but for the fact that there's still so much more of this crapola to come.
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