You know how I keep pointing out, in light of the fact that GOP presidential nominees have exceeded 50% of the popular vote precisely once in the past six presidential elections, that conservatives are a minority in this country, no matter what some Tea Partiers want to delude themselves into believing, and it isn't even close? I'm going to have to add "conservatives are a minority even in the Republican Party" to that list if this Bizarro World scenario is allowed to materialize:
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said Wednesday he would likely borrow some of Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) attacks against Hillary Clinton in a potential general election matchup.
During a lengthy interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Trump said Sanders’ strong words against [Mrs.] Clinton made for good soundbites. Sanders went so far earlier this month as to say [Mrs.] Clinton was not “qualified” to be president....
i.e. She's not sufficiently pure-strain communist.
....ripping her especially for her Iraq War vote and Wall Street ties.
“Well, Bernie Sanders has a message that’s interesting,” Trump said. “I’m going to be taking a lot of the things that Bernie said and using them. I can re-read some of his speeches. I can get some very good material. He said in many ways, she shouldn’t be there.
Does this presage The Donald's announcement of his running mate....?
Allahpundit, whose cynicism rivals even my own, paints the death of constitutional conservatism with vivid surrealism:
Most Republicans will mindlessly support him no matter what policies he pushes in the general election. If he goes out there at the first debate and says that workers should own the means of production, well, that’s just proof of how blue-collar he is at heart, isn’t it? If you’ve got 40% of the vote locked up due to pure tribalism. why not try to find another 11% by pandering to fans of a guy who beat Hillary across the map this year preaching “democratic socialism”? Rant about Wall Street, demand a living wage, attack Hillary for being a corporate puppet (even as Trump inevitably starts collecting big checks from wealthy Republicans to fund a national campaign machine this fall) and let the chips fall where they may. [emphasis added]
To the degree that the "Anybody But Hillary"/"Hillary scarecrow" camp and Trumplicans do not overlap - i.e. the latter are a lost cause, but the former may have some remaining wits to gather up about them - I want the ABHers to think long and hard about the escalating strangeness of the bedfellows they'll be taking on. Imagine that fall debate with Trump pandering to Bern-feelers and Mrs. Clinton....being Mrs. Clinton, and tell me just exactly how conservatives will not have been completely exiled from the national stage and national politics, our issues and our beliefs having been purged from the Republican Party and the national conversation. Then try to convince me that there is any reason to bother casting anything other than a protest or conscience vote at the presidential level by either writing in Scott Walker's or Rick Perry's name or voting for the Constitution Party candidate. I can guarantee you such futile arguments will fail, and will simply constitute their own deterioration into Trumplicanism. And that is a ride on which I will never ride shotgun.
See? I can be a lost cause/bitterender after all. It's a pity so many ex-Tea Partiers will never appreciate it.
Besides, one of them - John Nolte of Trump Pravda, who appears to possess more political prescience than I would have given him credit for, which only makes him more despicably detestable - is already embarked upon blaming us #NeverTrumpers for the electoral cataclysm their own disastrous foolishness in chasing after the New York liberal conman will have made inevitable in the first place:
Says the filthy quisling who will have helped sell the Right out to a (witting or unwitting) leftwingnut deep-cover operative and kept the country in Democrat clutches for a third consecutive term. And who can, so to say, go have sexual relations with himself.
Dan McLaughlin elaborates:
You see, Nolte and other Trump supporters taking this tack must realize by now that Trump is a complete disaster of a general election candidate, for reasons we have all discussed exhaustively. But this causes not the slightest bit of self-reflection over why this is. It can’t be that Trump alienates moderate and independent voters by being boorish, crude, insulting to women, ignorant, and all too eager to throw around racial, religious and ethnic stereotypes. It can’t be that Trump attracts white supremacists like dung attracts flies....It can’t be that Trump activates otherwise-unenthused [by Hillary] elements of the Democrat base and drives more Hispanic voters into the Democrat camp by loudly broadcasting the message that Hispanics are unwelcome in America. It can’t be that Trump additionally alienates conservatives by being a socially liberal fan of abortion and Planned Parenthood and a big-government fan of single-payer healthcare and confiscatory taxation, and Republicans by being a faithful donor to Democrats who supported John Kerry for president in 2004 and Hillary Clinton for president in 2008 as well as the Democrat takeover of Congress. It can’t be that Trump would be a terrible Commander-in-Chief, hypersensitive to his own ego, easily cowed (as even his own explanation of paying off Democrats suggests), and getting his ideas and information from the likes of Michael Moore and Code Pink. It can’t, in short, be that people don’t want to vote for Trump for president because they think Trump would be a terrible president who doesn’t agree with them on issues, doesn’t represent their values, and isn’t even minimally competent to the job.
No, that can’t possibly be the explanation for why Trump would be a disaster candidate in spite of the colossal press coverage he’s been gifted and his near-universal name recognition. It must be an elite conspiracy! A conspiracy that will extend to the 130 million or so people who may vote in November. [emphases added]
And the Trumplican response to that devastating avalanche of bald truth? "THAT's B.S.!!!" It's their response to pretty much everything that isn't fawning idolatrous worship of their hero. That, and punches to the face.
Exit question: Trumpmaniacs love Trump because they think "he fights!" But for what or whom does he fight but himself? And is there anything, over any amount of time, that would ever finally penetrate that Winter Soldier-esque brainwashing?
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