Posted on 12/11/2015 5:47:14 PM PST by Kaslin
I have a history with Donald Trump. Having rescinded an invitation from him to a gathering in August after his comments on Megyn Kelly, I watched as Trump supporters descended on social media, my radio program, my phone number, and my mailbox to express their outrage. It was weeks before my children could check the mailbox again. I still get random and assorted hate mail over the incident.
Despite that history, when this election season is concluded, Republicans are most likely going to owe Donald Trump thanks. This season of Trump has fleshed out and forced out some rules of politics that only applied because they had never really been tested. Like Howard Dean in 2004 proving that the person with the most money does not really always win, Donald Trump is proving that the Republicans with the most veteran Republican political consultants do not always win.
In fact, at this writing, Jeb Bush hovers around three percent in the polling and has gone from multi-thousand dollar fundraising dinners to just trying to fill rooms with people. Had Trump not entered the race, Bush would have faced a traditional field and probably been much more competitive. That different, traditional field tends to line donors up with establishment picks. People forget that the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan has only nominated one person since 1980 who backed Ronald Reagan in the 1980 primary cycle. That was John McCain.
George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and Mitt Romney all opposed Reagan in 1980. The party the media decries as a bastion of the far right has rarely nominated a candidate for president explicitly of the right. What is more, the political consultant class within the Republican Party has come from those moderate candidates who most often lose. From team Dole to team McCain to team Romney, their consultants have stayed within the upper ranks of elite Republican consultants and continue losing. They are now losing to Donald Trump.
Trump's presence is forcing the Republican Party to finally come to grips with three things. First, its consultant class is fat, comfortable, and commissioned. If a Republican wins, the consultants make millions. If a Republican loses, the consultants make millions. Many a beach houses have been bought by Republican consultants who have never had a major candidate win. The consultants get commissions for their mail, their advertising, their marked-up phone surveys and so much more. With the threat of Donald Trump rising, these consultants are risking their reputations, careers and livelihoods as the men and women who could not stop Donald Trump. Picking apart the carcass of the Bush campaign to make their beach house payment will not go over well if they do not stop Trump.
Second, Republican donors are finally being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils that they always try to force on conservatives, or be exposed as rank opportunists. In both 2008 and 2012, the base of Republican voters was told they must kneel before McCain or Romney and suck it up. Both times, the donor class candidate lost. Now the donor class candidates are losing to Trump, and the alternative to Trump, Ted Cruz, is a man the donors loathe. So either they will force themselves to unite with someone they do not care for, or expose themselves as the ones who really do take their football home when they do not get their way.
Third, Republican politicians are finally being held accountable. Trump would not exist as a candidate but for feckless Republican leadership in the face of an aggressive agenda from President Obama. Even now, Republican leaders are hoping Marco Rubio will unite the establishment while Ted Cruz is left in the shadow of Trump. Many Republicans have decided not to attack Trump because they think his continued presence hurts Ted Cruz. But they will very soon find themselves having to decide if they can continue that risk. Every day exposes them as being more interested in power than principle.
Republicans will owe Donald Trump thanks. He has finally forced the GOP to come to terms with its identity and its accumulated, unseparated chaff.
Isn’t that the truth.
BINGO!
Why reinvent the wheel?
Shut up Erick you loathesome toad.
He hasn’t left GOP & gone 3rd party. You might be jumping the gun. You’ll most likely be voting for him as the GOP candidate :)
Give it up, Erik. You blew it. You are an establishment wannabee.
So true. What a phony wannabee.
George Romney was initially the front runner for nomination in the 1968 election. However he was an infective campaigner and fell behind Richard Nixon in the polls.
Mitt Romney made a run for the presidential nomination in the 2008 election and won the nomination 2012 election but lost against the arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Bob Dole did run for the nomination in the 1980 presidential election. He was the early frontrunner for the GOP nomination in the 1996 presidential race, which he eventually won, but lost against William Jefferson Clinton who ran for reelection
Exactly
I agree that the GOPe must be destroyed.
But the replacement is going to have to be hospitable to Reagan Democrats, including their hopes and dreams, OR we are going to need a multiparty system.
Still going full retard as a Willard bootlicker, I see.
Dig it, I don’t vote for liars and I don’t vote for Socialists. Willard is a liar of EPIC proportions, and Willard is a Socialist of EPIC proportions.
That your intellectually retarded cranium cannot grasp such a concept as to why a CONSERVATIVE would not vote for a liar and a Socialist fraud (who had no intention of actually winning the general election) calls into question what YOUR agenda is on Free Republic.
I proudly cast a vote for Virgil Goode in 2012 for President, and so did my father. We would both do so again in a heartbeat. If Goode were not on the ballot, we would’ve voted for FR’s own Tom Hoefling, as the only other Conservative on the ballot.
Oh, and to make what’s left of your air-heavy skull implode, I openly REPUDIATE my vote for Zero’s first ringer, Captain McQueeg, in 2008. Yet another anti-American Socialist liar and fraud.
Deal with it.
RINO ROmney, author of gay marriage and ObamaCARE,
did not lose to Obama; Instead, the bastard GAVE UP.
After backstabbing the Gov. Palin and her little
children, the Bishop Romney had nothing left in him
to even criticize or dispute a real fight
which EVEN HIS WIFE COULD HAVE WON.
If only she had run, instead of the stinking liar Romney.
Did you know I was so all-powerful that I and I alone kept Willard from winning a race he wasn’t trying to win ?
Dont destroy a God Damn thing (leave that to liberals) ...get Ted Cruz elected and you will have the most right/conservative President since Reagan and if you can’t do that get the next best guy in there..(whoever that is) and whatever you do don’t let a liberal Dem win
This is the way adults act
Here’s the problem.
The GOPe will choke Cruz’s efforts by denying him the money. They’d prefer Hillary to Cruz. Without money, Cruz is toast.
Remember McCain took a ‘break from campaigning’... so did Romney. Wonder what that was all about?
It’s so very taxing for ringers.
If fieldmarshaldj had voted for someone other than the uniquely despicable excuse for a Republican POTUS candidate that was Willard Mitt Romney (similar to his daddy but even worse, very similar to Obozo and just as bad), Romney would still have been able to BUY the nomination with the ocean of Wall Street, K Street, US Chamber of Utterly Corrupt Crony Commerce, GOP-E $$$$$$$$$$ expended on his behalf. I voted for Rick Santorum in the very late Illinois primary and that is exactly what happened.
I then wrote in Tom Hoefling (and proud of it!) rather than choose between Charles Manson and Osama bin Laden. Nominate Romney or anyone like him again and I will do it again and I will not be alone.
You unrepentant Romney sock puppets simply do NOT get it. Those with common sense REFUSED to vote for Romney OR for Obozo precisely because either might possibly have won (Romney not really but for the sake of argument). I have no intention of looking myself in the mirror much less of meeting my maker with Mitt the baby-killer on my conscience. When I say I am pro-life, I MEAN that I am pro-life. Ditto pro-gun, pro-marriage, pro-"straight," anti-taxes on modest folks, anti-envirowhacko, pro-military, pro-veteran, pro-military weaponry, foreign policy aggressive, etc.
The message of 2012 seems to be sinking in as Jeb has $300 million to waste in his PAC account and cannot move the needle past about 5%. The greedypigs are now talking nostalgically about dragging Mittens back in since he was nominated last time and the greedypigs just KNOW that they can do it again for him. BUT, they can't. Jeb is a much more salable commodity than Romney but still quite unmarketable. The spending of obscene amounts of money to buy a GOP POTUS nomination for an absolute elitist greedypig POS like Romney has become the moral equivalent of a proven track record of child-molesting.
Now, the purge must continue to the RNC, gubernatorial, senatorial and Congressional levels with relentless primaries to purge the greedypigs (i.e., Priebus, Karl Rove, the entire "consultant class," McConnell, Cornyn, Moocowski, Isakson, Hatch, Collins, Kirk, Ryan-o, McCarthy, Alexander, Corker, Cockroach, Wicker, McCain, Flake, Grahamnesty, Scalise, Kinzinger, and so many, many more). Off with their heads! Each and every one. Jail Aaron Schock before beheading him!
If I must eagerly support Trump to destroy the evil that is the GOP-E, then so be it, although my chosen weaponized candidate is Ted Cruz. The central purpose of this exercise is to ELECT a WORTHY POTUS not merely to stop Obozo or Hillary or Romney or McCain or whatever greedy treasonweasel may be on today's menu.
And when the GOP Brokers Mitt into the nomination and they run a unity ticket with hillary, Abject fools like you will be there AGAIN to vote for the pair of baby killers.
Because you WANT liberalism.
Folks, the GOPe is what attracted Trump to the Republican party over the Democrat party in the first place. He switched parties right when the GOP turned the direction of McCain-Romney. Even though he was a registered Democrat when McCain was nominated, Trump declined to endorse Obama and publicly, cheerfully endorsed McCain instead. He joined the party right about the time it left the rest of us.
Trump makes promises that he'll be tomorrow what he was the opposite of yesterday and the day before; Ted Cruz makes promise that he'll be tomorrow what he was yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.
Trump is a losing proposition. His ONLY credibility and trust is derived from a "personal brand" that he carefully established through the MSM and which in itself, outside of his real/tangible assets, he values at several billion dollars, according to Forbes magazine.
Out of some 38 dozen billionaires in the U.S., ONLY Donald Trump, who is 3rd tier among them, has a "personal brand." Those other billionaires managed to do pretty well -- some of them quite a lot better than Trump -- without the personal brand that Trump values so highly for his own success. Voting for Trump's brand is voting for smoke, mirrors, and marketing.
People willing to vote for Trump may hope they're voting for a "conservative," but what they're really voting for is their trust in marketing. Trump's past belies Trump's promises, but some people believe in the brand over the reality. Cruz's past confirms Cruz's promises -- I am willing to vote for him because I believe in reality.
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