Posted on 11/25/2015 7:58:05 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The contours of the outsider-as-favorite Republican primary began to take shape this summer, when the candidates without establishment support, led by Donald Trump, consolidated half of the vote in national polls.
The news for GOP elites has grown consistently worse since then. And only now, as those contours stretch far enough to squeeze the establishment entirely out of contention, are the party faithful emerging from their state of Trump denial. Theyâre beginning to reckon publicly with the calamity of this campaign, and are grasping to reassert control over the process. The only questions now are whether theyâre too late, and whether they can defeat Trumpism without acknowledging and atoning for their complicity in his ascent.
A few months ago, Trump and his fellow outsiders were a clear threat to the party, but it took several of themâTrump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorinaâto amass 50 percent support, with Trump contributing the lionâs share.
Today, they eclipse it easily. In some early-state polls, Trump and Ted Cruz alone enjoy the support of more than half of all likely voters, while the outsiders combined enjoy the support of more than two thirds of all respondents.
This presents the GOP with a new nightmare scenario. Earlier in the year, Republicans could take solace in the likelihood that the field of elected officials would winnow and that the party would coalesce around a single alternative to the insurgents as it did in 2008 and 2012. They were sure it would come down to a frontrunner against two or three formidable conservative challengers who were splitting the activist vote among themselves.
That winnowing hasnât happened. And now, if and when it does, itâs conceivable that the combined forces of the party will only be able to marshal about one-third or less of the overall voteânot enough to guarantee victory even if Trump and Cruz battle it out beyond Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. And even that assumes supporters of candidates like Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie donât defect to Cruz or Trump instead of Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush.
Whether motivated by this particular analysis or not, party elites are snapping to attention. John Kasichâs SuperPAC is promising a multi-million-dollar anti-Trump blitz. A more concerted effort, spearheaded by GOP operative Liz Mair, is called Trump Card LLC, and operates on the premise that âunless something dramatic and unconventional is done, Trump will be the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton will become president.â
Prominent surrogates for leading candidates have embraced the notion, first propounded by liberals, that Trump is a âfascist.â But the principals they back wonât go near the term. Some, like Rubio and Cruz, wonât criticize Trump at all, and Cruz in particular is a Trump sycophantââa big fan.â Which raises the question of whether a party that enables Trump and Trumpism can effectively root out either.
Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush aide who now writes an opinion column for the Washington Post, acknowledged that âTrump has, so far, set the terms of the primary debate and dragged other candidates in the direction of ethnic and religious exclusion. One effect has been the legitimization of even more extreme viewsâsignaling that it is okay to give voice to sentiments and attitudes that, in previous times, people would have been too embarrassed to share in public.â
With the denial fading, Gerson asks, âIs it possible, and morally permissible, for economic and foreign policy conservatives, and for Republicans motivated by their faith, to share a coalition with the advocates of an increasingly raw and repugnant nativism?â
The answer appears to be âyes.â As much as they want Trump vanquished, the problem for the other Republicans in the field is that theyâve all pledged to back the GOP nominee, no matter who wins. John McCain, a man of the party who nevertheless agreed to place Sarah Palin in line for the presidency, says he will support Trump if faced with a choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Thatâs not the Breitbart crew talking. Itâs the RNC, the entire primary field, and one of the partyâs most recent presidential nominees. Which is why when writers like National Reviewâs Kevin Williamson lay the blame for Trumpâs ascent at the feet of conservative movement jesters Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, and shrug that nothing can be doneââas a matter of culture, Trump isâunhappilyâright where a great many conservatives are: angry, sputtering, lashing out. Trump may not last; Trumpism will.ââit rings hollow.
As much as theyâve awakened to the threat that Trumpism poses to their party, Republicans and the conservative intelligentsia lack the self-awarenessâor perhaps the temerityâto acknowledge that though they now resent it, theyâve been courting it all along.
thx that made sense
There is a lot of talk about Trumps mis-speaks.
I've watched nearly every speech he's given, and a lot of interviews.
I'll readily admit I'm biased to the extreme in his favor, and thus possibly blind to those mis-speaks.
But what are those words he shouldn't have said?
I have only heard words that should have been said.
They never give an example, so what are a couple?
Andy Jackson? I’m thinking Teddy Roosevelt.
Trump just might throw a monkey wrench into the GOPe third party plans by naming one of them as his running mate. It worked for Reagan when he put Bush on his ticket and it would work this time, too. The VP position (other than presiding over the senate) is mostly ceremonial anyway.
Maybe. Rick Perry or Scott Walker?
Trmp is the BEST thing that has happened to the GOP Party of WIMPS in the last 35 years.
Teddy Roosevelt was a PROGRESSIVE!
Best election cycle ever! If Trump wins the nom all hell is going to break out LOL.
You sound happy about going to hell. Why don't you just say "God damn America."
The same people boasting about Donald's GOP poll numbers are the same people that have nothing intelligent to say about the polls for the general election in which Trump is getting hi lunch handed to him by Hillary. For every 4 votes Trump is getting in those polls, Carson, Cruz and Rubio are pulling 5. That's a huge difference. It isn't as if "people will get to know Trump" and change their minds. He's already extremely well-known to the People Magazine crowd (aka "the Swing Vote") and they find him entertainingly despicable.
I am still waiting for someone to intelligently sketch out a path for Trump to improve enough to win the general election next fall.
If it's Trump against Hillary, she'll win in a landslide, unless she goes to jail, and the Obama administration will never prosecute her.
nice try...now go drink some muslim vomit you idiot....you’re welcome.
Teddy Roosevelt beat the crony capitalists and their back room deals.
But, he WAS a Progressive!
Sound familiar? “In his landmark âNew Nationalismâ speech, delivered at Osawatomie, Kansas, in 1910, TR explained what this meant for property rights. In contrast to the Founders, who believed that the right to property was rooted in the natural right to the fruits of oneâs labor, Roosevelt argued that the right to property could be justified only if it benefited the community, and the only way to benefit the community was to redistribute the wealth. “
Some reforms are beneficial in those times. And the Bull Moose Party as it was called, wasn’t communist/Marxist. Personally, I am glad he lead the way in putting forth regulations on food quality establishing the FDA. He loved the outdoors life, but was such a killer of animals I suspect Enironmentalists would loathe to claim him nowadays.
I liked him also! Especially Speak softly and Carry a BIG stick!”Just sayin he was a progressive.
And I am saying it doesn’t have the meaning “progressive” has to day. But yes his party broke away from esrablidhment and were called progressives.
I think the answer to that question is, it’s early. Hillary is really dirty, and that cannot be hid under a bushel forever. Not only Benghazi, but also her sudden wealth.As to the latter, there is - at least in a civics book sense, a way around the Obama Just Us department. Consider the following facts:
The conclusion is that each state has the authority, arguably the duty, to enforce against any presidential candidate the constitutional prohibition against accepting anything from foreign governments while being in federal employ. Each state should make it impractical, preferably impossible, for a violator to win its electoral votes. Each state should pass a law creating a cause of action against any presidential candidate, and in a civil suit prove by a mere preponderance of the evidence, that the candidate has been hoovering up illegitimate foreign money. The only penalty would be the inability to win the state’s electoral votes, which would be a civil penalty not requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Which Hillary Clinton has.
- “Liberals” are all in for CFR; Obama loves to whine about the Citizens United decision which limited McCain-Feingold, for example. And SCOTUS upheld it (5-4) on grounds that the loss of First Amendment freedom was (somehow) worth the so-called cleanliness of campaign finance it supposedly provides.
- Hillary announced that she and Bill were “dead broke” when they left the WH; now they command a quarter of a billion dollars. A lot of that money came from overseas, and some of it came from foreign governments.
Hillary was “holding an office of trust” under the US as senator (2003-2009) and Secretary of State (2009-2013). The Clintons were raking in the dough during that time and, launder it though they might, she was a principal in the partnership which is their marriage, and in the foundations which make those so-called charitable donations to their foundation nominally legit. It is transparently the case that “any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever” covers contributions to a foundation named after Clinton, which includes Hillary as a principal. And whether or not the foundation spent and spends its money on legit charitable operations is beside the point. Money contributed to the foundation cannot evade of any kind whatever. You cannot claim that McCain-Feingold is good law which needs to be better, and simultaneously claim that getting rich from foreign sources, some known to be foreign government sources, in view of seeking the office of President of the United States, is constitutionally legit.
- Article 1 Section 9:
- No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the CongressAlthough traditionally (and in accord with Federal law which commits Congress to abide by the statesâ choices in validating the results of the Electoral College), the people of each state vote for their stateâs electors, constitutionally that is not even required at all. Thus, at a minimum, each state has control of the process by which the Electors are selected by the ballot, and SCOTUS has no writ to second guess questions of fairness even were it so inclined.If that seems too onerous, you could penalize the miscreant by merely putting her line in the middle of the ballot while her opponent was on Line A. In which case no other candidate for any office would want to be on the same ticket with her . . .
If you put THAT much trust in the polls, the most recent ones have Trump handily beating Hillary.
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