Posted on 11/13/2015 9:45:56 AM PST by conservativejoy
There seems to be an issue with the GOP in DC, and let me tell you, it isn't pretty. Establishment GOP seemingly would rather have the likes of Shrillary than a non vetted (by them, of course) politician that isn't hand picked by them. What the heck is this all about?
Less than three months before the kickoff Iowa caucuses, there is growing anxiety bordering on panic among Republican elites about the dominance and durability of Donald Trump and Ben Carson and widespread bewilderment over how to defeat them.
Party leaders and donors fear that nominating either man would have negative ramifications for the GOP ticket up and down the ballot, virtually ensuring a Hillary Rodham Clinton presidency and increasing the odds that the Senate falls into Democratic hands.
The party establishment is paralyzed. Big money is still on the sidelines. No consensus alternative to the outsiders has emerged from the pack of governors and senators running, and there is disagreement about how to prosecute the case against them. Recent focus groups of Trump supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire commissioned by rival campaigns revealed no silver bullet.
In normal times, the way forward would be obvious. The wannabes would launch concerted campaigns, including television attack ads, against the Âfront-runners. But even if the other candidates had a sense of what might work this year, it is unclear whether it would ultimately accrue to their benefit. Trump's counterpunches have been withering, while Carson's appeal to the base is spiritual, not merely political. If someone was able to do significant damage to them, there's no telling to whom their supporters would turn, if anyone.
"The rest of the field is still wishing upon a star that Trump and Carson are going to Âself destruct," said Eric Fehrnstrom, a former adviser to 2012 nominee Mitt Romney. But, he said, "they have to be made to self destruct. Nothing has happened at this point to dislodge Trump or Carson."
Fehrnstrom pointed out that the fourth debate passed this week without any candidate landing a blow against Trump or Carson. "We're about to step into the holiday time accelerator," he said. "You have Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, then Iowa and a week later, New Hampshire, and it's going to be over in the blink of an eye."
According to other Republicans, some in the party establishment are so desperate to change the dynamic that they are talking anew about drafting Romney — despite his insistence that he will not run again. Friends have mapped out a strategy for a late entry to pick up delegates and vie for the nomination in a convention fight, according to the Republicans who were briefed on the talks, though Romney has shown no indication of reviving his interest.
For months, the GOP professional class assumed Trump and Carson would fizzle with time. Voters would get serious, the thinking went, after seeing the outsiders share a stage with more experienced politicians at the first debate. Or when summer turned to fall, kids went back to school and parents had time to assess the candidates. Or after the second, third or fourth debates, certainly.
None of that happened, of course, leaving establishment figures disoriented. Consider Thomas H. Kean Sr., a former New Jersey governor who for most of his 80 years has been a pillar of his party. His phone is ringing daily, bringing a stream of exasperation and confusion from fellow GOP power brokers.
The apprehension among some party elites goes beyond electability, according to one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the worries.
"We're potentially careening down this road of nominating somebody who frankly isn't fit to be president in terms of the basic ability and temperament to do the job," this strategist said. "It's not just that it could be somebody Hillary could destroy electorally, but what if Hillary hits a banana peel and this person becomes president?â€
Look, I don't know how the American public can make it more clear- WE DO NOT WANT A CAREER POLITICIAN
I don't want someone who supports single-payer government run health care. I don't want someone who wants to dramatically increase the size of DHS. I don't want a big-government populist, whose primary differentiation from Obama is his belief that he can do big government better.
I don't want someone whose policy prescriptions sound like he did his homework on the bus on his way to the stump speech. I don't want (another) petulant narcissist who attacks his "fellow Republicans" like a fifth grader on the schoolyard. I don't want a president who shows up at a debate looking like the dumb jock who accidentally got put in the AP class.
I don't want "hope and change" with a fence.
In other words, I don't want Trump.
But then again, I'm a principled conservative, unlike most Trump supporters, who lap up his bull in the chyyyynnuh shop shtick. I'm not deluded into thinking the most liberal candidate in the field is the only "authentic" conservative, because he eschews political correctness as he spews his half-baked caricatures of Republican issues with no real solutions other than his ridiculous assertion that he's the first guy who thought to hire smart people.
Ironically, it is the guy who claims he will facilitate his non-plans by hiring smart people, who is currently leading in the polls because of the gullibility of dumb people, his followers, who are less educated, and if their social media posts are any indication, far less intelligent that the supporters of all the "GOPe" candidates they attack, oblivious to the reality that virtually every one of those candidates is more conservative, and gives us more grounds to believe that they are conservative, than Trump himself.
They got their “Dream†candidates in 2008 and 2012.
The question is “How did it work out for them?”
The answer is “They got who they wanted in office.”
They’ve been afraid since Trump announced. That’s why they wanted him to promise not to run third party. That way they could wipe him out in the primaries then not have to worry about him. So far that ain’t working.
+1
It truly is all about the money. Nothing can be done, at least nothing that the American people could bring themselves to support.
The only time that happened was Sen. James Buckley, R-C-NY but he was a one-termer.
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