Posted on 08/10/2015 6:50:41 PM PDT by cotton1706
Republicans have been slow in recognizing the real damage Donald Trump is doing to their party. The harm is not to the party’s image. What Trump has done is exacerbate the increasingly bitter rift between the party’s leaders and its grass roots. He’s made the GOP’s future dicey.
The quarter of the Republican electorate Trump has attracted consists largely of this alienated group. Since he voices their resentment of Republican elites – especially their arch-enemies in Congress – he’s become their champion. And champions are hard to dethrone.
Trump doesn’t have to run as an independent to be a serious troublemaker. As long as he stays in the GOP race, the split in the party is likely to deepen and primaries may turn into nasty and divisive contests. And imagine if he wins enough delegates to disrupt the Republican convention by making demands. The media would again make him the center of attention.
“The Republican party created Donald Trump, because they made lot of promises to their base and never kept them,” Erick Erickson, the conservative editor of RedState, told Molly Ball of the Atlantic.
Erickson is right. “At this point, most of the people I encounter on radio and on the internet, they’re not really people who at the end of the day want to vote for Donald Trump,” Erickson said. “But they sure do like that he’s burning down the Republican Party that never listened to them to begin with.”
In Washington, the rift isn’t taken seriously. But it should be. Even before Trump arrived on the Republican scene it was getting worse. It began to grow after Republicans won the House in 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
So, the ‘Pubbie leadership has fumbled or sabotaged the entire conservative agenda, and the issue Donald Trump?
I don’t think so.
Everything going on now with the GOP can be laid squarely at the feet of the establishment hacks and their corporate check writers in DC.
They have screwed the base over and held it in overt contempt for the past 5 years especially.
No, Boner and Ditch and Hev Arbusto represent the end of the GOPee.
No, it’s the GOP that is threatening the GOP’s future.
Anyone remember it that way? I sure don't. Cruz accused McConnell of lying to the Republican caucus.
These inside-the-beltway guys think they are oh so smart, trying to soften support for Trump, but they can't even be honest in their assessment. The fact is, the Republicans haven't tried to win anything, because making excuses is much easier than standing for something. If the Republicans would have stood their ground on at least a couple modest issues, they would be in this position. We already have that idiot McConnell saying dissecting babies and distributing their body parts is preferable to taking a principled stand on attaching PP defunding to the CR, or debt ceiling. I hope Trump burns this joke to the ground.
Trump is just noise, but he is disturbing the GOPe, that is good.
The GOPe is the one threatening the future of the party. Arrogant jerks. Like Obozo, they just want to blame everyone else for their failures.
would should be, would not.
If y’all read the article, both Barnes and RedState’s erickson (gasp!) are placing the blame for the Trump phenomenon on the GOP-e, not on Trump. By shafting the conservative base one too many times, Trump has risen on the anger of the base against the gop-e.
Barnes is wrong--the core constituency is not a quarter of the Republican vote; the core constituency is about 35% to 42% of the total electorate. And we are a strong majority of the republican vote.
So Fred can whine all he likes; this time around the track, we are going to drive.
Fred and the Republican Establishment are threatening to impose their will by fiat on the Convention by packing the Credentials and Rules Committees. Originally directed to avoiding the risk that Ted Cruz shows up with enough votes to get the nomination, we were intended to hear about Natural Born Citizen and Article II, Sec. 1 of the Constitution.
Before they rule Cruz delegates out of their seats and Cruz off the floor.
One concern you ought to have is still that course of events--if they can figure out how to get rid of Trump, the next target will be Ted.
They really have difficulty training their fire on Cruz with Trump in the act.
The only Repubs worth voting for since Eisenhower were Goldwater , Reagan , and now Trump or Cruz .
What has destroyed the GOP is that they sold their souls to The Cheap Labor Express.
The Democrats represent the illegal aliens.
The GOP represents their employers.
No one represents the citizens.
The citizens want the borders secured and the laws enforced.
The GOP has already been paid to thwart any effort to do so.
They will nominate another amnesty candidate because they must to satisfy the donors.
The citizens will look elsewhere.
Great post, David.
Some of these “conservative” pundits should get out of Washington once every couple of years - it might clear their foggy bottom heads a bit.
They just DON’T get it do they!!!!!! They destroyed EVERYONE who is not one of them!!!!! WE ALL gave them the house and senate this last election by a landslide THEY gave US the MIDDLE FINGER!!!!! Trump is NO conservative I KNOW THIS but I WANT PAYBACK!!!!!!! Trump takes the nomination ALL of their heads WILL explode, the country CAN NOT get any worse with Trump at the helm and he is NO Marxist!!!!!!! He CAN NOT be bought!!!!!!
Uncle Freddie says that like it is a bad thing.
They ALL said if we only had the house and the senate, NOW they say if WE ONLY had the presidency BLA, BLA, BLA, LIARS bought and paid for LIARS!!!
Got an interesting piece of prose from Star Parker the other day that I thought was spot on - here’s an excerpt:
“Sometimes shock is the only thing that will shake up an entrenched status quo. A brick smashing through glass might be the only thing that will get attention.
Donald Trump is a businessman who understands this. This is what he is doing and it’s working.
There’s a lot of frustration in America today, and there should be.
America is a nation with enormous problems. And practically all of them trace back to politicians kicking the can down the road.
Republicans could have dealt with escalating health-care costs, and large numbers of uninsured Americans, before Barack Obama was elected. They didn’t.
Republicans could have dealt with government policies that led to the huge financial and real estate collapse in 2008. They could have dealt with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Department of Housing and Urban Development — government programs that use taxpayers’ money to subsidize the purchase of housing. They didn’t.
Republicans could have dealt with the enormous problems with our broken entitlements programs — Social Security and Medicare. President Bush added another trillion dollars in commitments to Medicare with the prescription drug program. To his credit, President Bush tried to reform Social Security, but, despite Republican control of both the Senate and the House, failed. However, that doesn’t mean one should stop trying, which is what happened.
The changing demographics of the nation were obvious years ago. Republicans could have been aggressive in reaching out to poor minority communities to help them understand that freedom and markets would solve the problems that the welfare state was making worse. They didn’t.
And, of course, we didn’t get more than 10 million illegals in America overnight.
This is the result of years of Washington ignoring this problem, as it got worse and worse.
In response to neglect, in response to lack of real vision for the nation, Americans opted for change in 2008. But change in the wrong direction.
So now, for the past seven years, we have had the hard left running America, taking some of our major problems and enacting left-wing, big-government “solutions,” making these problems worse.
We now have government-run health care that is already making health care even more expensive, less innovative and more of a drain on taxpayers. We have major new government control of our banking and financial services industry, creating more protection for big banks and less innovation.
We sit with government more bloated than ever, growth rates below historic averages, employment below historic averages, no solutions in sight for the, by some estimates, $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities of our entitlement programs.
And now the USA is about to conclude a nuclear deal with a nation that chants “death to America.”
No wonder we have frustration.”
Trump is redefining the Conservative Republican party back to what it once was and what most American voters thought it was. Trump, Dr. Carson, and Cruz are the only three Republicans running that I recognize.
I’ll bet they’re (the establishment) drawers are wound so tight they walk sideways. Trump comes along not caring one whit about whose toes he steps on, is honest about his business dealings and everything else he’s asked about and now they wonder why he’s ahead in the polls??? People are sick of Republicans AND Democrats!! Not a dimes worth of difference in any of them...maybe except for a few Republicans who are fighting against a raging tide to do the right thing. This may be a new day in politics......I don’t know but watch out all you water carriers for the Republican establishment. You may become irrevelent if you aren’t already.
l
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