The GOPe has Screwed the Pooch (Sargon's vain analysis)

In my humble opinion, the Republican party has effectively and totally destroyed itself with its relentless character assassination vendetta against its own frontrunner, Donald Trump.

There will be no recovering from this. Here are the only possible scenarios I can see, as we finish the primary season and move into the GOP convention:

Scenario #1: The only scenario that has the potential to expand the GOP demographic base permanently and beat Hillary is for Donald Trump to win the nomination and face Hillary in the general election, either with a clear majority or a near majority of delegates.

Scenario #2: Ted Cruz wins the GOP nomination fair and square, without jumping into bed with the GOPe. In that case, his narrow demographic base probably dooms him, but at least voter enthusiasm is preserved. Unfortunately, this scenario has already been obviated by the fact that the GOPe is demonizing Trump nonstop, infuriating his voters, and Ted Cruz has adopted the Establishment tactics wholeheartedly, which alienates Donald Trump voters who otherwise might be willing to support Ted Cruz.

Scenario #3: Ted Cruz wins the nomination with the help of the GOPe, either by getting a majority of delegates or by leapfrogging the frontrunner at the convention. This scenario still results in a candidate with a vary narrow base who likely can't overcome the demographic realities which accrue to the benefit of the Democrat party. Furthermore, this scenario also results in furious Trump voters who believe in their hearts that the nomination was stolen as a result of the constant character assassination directed at Donald trump.

Scenario #4: The convention is contested and someone other than Trump or Cruz is nominated. In this case, voters from both of the leading candidates are furious with the party, and enough of them stay home for Hillary to win easily.

It looks very much to me like the "Anybody But Trump" movement is beginning to succeed. Unfortunately, that "anybody" is going to be Hillary Clinton, unless she's indicted, in which case any of the above scenarios could still, theoretically at least, result in a GOP victory.

Barring that, however, the only scenarios that could succeed are scenarios number 1 & 2.

And, as I have already noted, scenario #2 has already been destroyed by the GOPe, with Ted Cruz acting in full complicity.

Thus, conservatives' best hope is scenario #1, just like it has been for the last few months. It is the only scenario still possible that preserves voter enthusiasm, expands the GOP tent, and wipes out Hillary in the general election.

Since scenario #1 is itself becoming less likely now, IMHO, and due to the causes I've outlined, this leaves me with the inescapable conclusion that the GOPe has already screwed the pooch. The GOP will not win the White House in 2016 absent Trump at the top of the ticket. It could have won with Cruz possibly, but only in the case where Cruz remained an anti-Establishment candidate, and didn't adopt the Establishment tactics being used against Donald Trump. It's already too late for that, of course.

I'm convinced that the GOP will be content to remain in marginal power by controlling the House and perhaps still the Senate. That will allow them (with Hillary in the White House) to preserve the system as it is, where both parties scratch each other's backs, put up token opposition on various issues, and everybody just keeps enriching themselves at the expense of the People.

For doing what they have done, the GOP deserves to die a painful and lingering death. I, for one, am done with the Party, and will never register as a Republican again: not even to vote in their closed primaries. I'll stick with being a registered independent.

It saddens me very much to write these words, because, only a few short months ago, we had 2 candidates with the potential to lead a desperately-needed Revolution in American politics and culture.

But, alas, I believe it is not to be. The GOPe has overplayed their hand to the point where they have destroyed the party's chances for every possible scenario, except for the one case that appeared like it would happen: Donald Trump winning the nomination.

Now, Donald Trump bears some responsibility for this, as does Ted Cruz, for different reasons.

But the real villain in this tragic sequence of events is the GOPe: Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, Lindsay Graham, John McCain, Bob Dole, the National Review, and all of their elitist ilk.

Yes, folks, I'm still hopeful that somehow something positive will come from the criminal and treasonous Establishment proceedings that we all have been watching before our very eyes. But I doubt it.

It looks like the Revolution will have to wait for at least another four years. That's good enough for the Establishment. As long as they can always delay the inevitable, the inevitable becomes impossible.

The hatred that I feel for the GOPe burns within me with a passion that will never die. Indeed, it only waxes stronger with each Machiavellian shenanigan they pull. It will be on full display at the GOP convention as well, of course.

I can't help but feel a profound sense of loss in looking at the state of affairs that we have arrived at.

No matter what happens at the convention, there will be large masses of GOP voters who will feel totally betrayed by the party leadership, and this will carry all the way through to the general election cycle.

Come on man, Trump has run the most nasty, [distasteful campaigns] in modern times.

You're the one with the blinders, because Cruz and the GOPe out-nastied and out-distastefulled Donald Trump a long time ago.

I've never seen a more relentless and diabolically slanted campaign of character assassination in my life, fully aided and abetted by the Left and Mass Media.

Ted Cruz played the race card, for God's sake, knowing full well that Donald Trump isn't in the least bit racist or bigoted.

And, nowadays, the Cruz campaign can't string together 2 sentences without attacking the catch-all boogeyman Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is crass, blunt, and juvenile at times, but the shameless, vile, amoral behavior which the GOPe/Mass Media and now Ted Cruz have exhibited makes Trump look like a nun.

Donald Trump is candid and relatively honest, sometimes brutally so. He doesn't speak like a lawyer when answering questions, and that's a good thing.

Ted Cruz is the one who has totally inverted his supposed anti-Establishment principles, and he parrots every single GOPe attack against Trump. He's like the Mini-GOPe, saying "me, too" to every meme they try to promulgate.

In doing so, Ted Cruz has likely helped destroy two candidacies, not just one...

I congratulate you for a reply that it as courageous as it is insightful.

You have the courage in the face of a swarm of Trump supporters to turn the search light of truth onto their delusions. I don't think there have been more than one or two replies in this thread which dared to tell the truth. For example, "Trump has run the most nasty, distasteful campaign in modern times." You make it clear that it is Trump, not Cruz, who has turned this affair into a shambles because Trump's "entire strategy has been to insult, belittle, tear down, smear, trash, etc, every other candidate in the race."

To dare without wisdom is merely brash but you coupled insights with courage and produced a praiseworthy analysis. Having identified the culprit in this affair you then succinctly characterized him as a "populist protectionist with some nationalism mixed in" thus exactly defining the political reality of the candidate. He is anything but a conservative and you tell us what the fact he is, "an opportunist pretending to be a conservative to get what he wants at this moment in time."

Many of us have said from the first day Trump entered the race that he was not a conservative, that he was incoherent and inconsistent in his policies, that his biography was deplorable, revealing a repugnant character unworthy of the highest office in the world. Every day his every utterance in this campaign has only confirmed our initial understanding of the man.

Having properly identified Trump as the man who has soiled the process, having accurately identified him as an unprincipled opportunist, you make the incisive value judgment:

if Trump were a real conservative leading a movement that could stand the test of time I would be willing to get behind his candidacy even if I knew it would not win this time around. But Trump isn't a movement, he's not even a conservative. This is a one off for him and his policies

All of this misplaced faith in Donald Trump is in the service of an unworthy cause. In fact, as you point out, there is no cause apart from the cause of Donald Trump himself. This is not Goldwater in 1964 courageously defining conservatism to young Republicans like me, this is a rogue off the reservation who is simply on the make. Trump is founding no new political philosophy, no movement, nothing worthy of the destruction he is bringing down on all of us.

There is no movement to be founded by Donald Trump because the entire campaign is a sham and the cynical application of reality television to the stump. It is shameless at its core because it is utterly selfish.

So there is no movement and there can be no victory with Trump, a reality which you point out and which the data relentlessly drives home to any observer with an open mind. Trump is the most hated potential presidential candidate in living memory, he has no hope whatsoever of making up the deficiencies among voters of color, women, or suburbanites with white males whom you properly identify as the realm of his support. With his stratospheric negatives, Trump will need about 80% of white males to win.

To quote you once again, Trump's debacle "would be a pointless loss since Trump represents nothing lasting." That is because Trump supporters on a gut level, as you point out, support the man and not a coherent set of conservative policies. When will we conservatives finally learn our lesson and properly vet candidates according to conservative bona fides? We are whoring after a contrived reality television image with no integrity. We will get not a conservative but a narcissist. This is so unnecessary when we have a bona fide conservative in Ted Cruz.

Trump supporters spend a lot of time castigating the GOPe, and there is much to decry, but they ought to ask themselves what sort of message are they sending to freshly elected conservative Representatives and Senators who see how fickle the conservative base is when it comes to supporting a man who stood on the floor of the Senate all night with a urine bag tied to his leg fighting for that conservative base. These newly elected representatives and senators will conclude, and rightly so, that there is no upside in fighting the good fight against the establishment in Washington because the base will desert them to go whoring after a mountebank who shows them a little leg.

I congratulate you on your insightful and courageous reply.

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