Well stated summation of the bewildered depression so many of us are feeling. When I have scores of FR posters telling me that conservatives can’t win elections and that they know Trump is not a conservative but just don’t care, I have to wonder how it all went wrong.
Hillary needs to send Trump a thank-you note. He single handedly killed the vast right-wing conspiracy.
What went wrong is that the GOPe became so odious that for some this has become personal and smacking them has become an end in of itself.
Elections are often more about voting against than voting for. They are voting against the GOPe and they see Trump as the best chance to give them the smackdown.
1) Purist conservatives stand in moral judgment of realist conservatives
2) Purist conservatives withhold their vote or threaten to do so if a realist or center-right candidate is nominated
3) Purist conservatives deny reality and refuse to team with realists who are willing to make incremental progress rather than lose entirely
3) Purist conservatives engage in monkey-screeching disdain and mocking of any candidate or their supporters who attempt to innovate, break the mold, come from a different angle towards the same ultimate goal, or speak a different lingo than themselves
4) Purist conservative's underlying political impulse is theocratic fascism; yet they accuse other political factions of fascism
5) Purist conservatives are every bit as humorless and narcissistic as purist progressives
6) Purist conservatives, if they can't win because their sour judgmental elitism has turned the majority off, don't want anyone else to win, either. Then they blame the realists for the punishments dished out by the progressives that the Purists helped elect, even though the realists actually want to win, but can't get the Purists to accept objective reality long enough to soil themselves by voting for an imperfect human being with realistic conservative goals.