Chris found my last Ask Roger Anything to pose this:
Why the **** doesn’t it bother Republicans that rational respected leaders of their own party have branded Trump as dangerous?
Two presidents, a presidential nominee and the speaker of the house won’t endorse him. Romney gave a beautiful and impassioned speech on why Trump would be terrible for the nation.
Why don’t they even listen to their own?
Because Donald J. Trump could be President, as I first suggested on January 27.
Because the people who are supporting Trump don’t care about what the Republican leadership thinks.
Because the GOP leadership has been, depending on the particular voter’s POV – and more than one of these can be true:
* are TOO liberal, RINOS (Republicans In Name Only), who actually (occasionally) compromised with the President; when I saw John Boehner and Paul Ryan so dubbed, I realized there was an almost an impossibly obstructionist standard that must be met
* are too financially reckless; George W. Bush paid for the Iraq war, in particular, on a credit card
* are too corporatist, beholden to the rich and powerful, exporting jobs abroad
* are not securing the borders
* are doing too little on the national security front
* are too socially conservative on issues such as gay marriage and even abortion
* are too religious, in that judgmental way
* are too political correct
* are not racist enough
* are letting the world change too quickly
* are not entertaining enough
It’s a dance, really. The Republican party was thrilled when Donald Trump generated interest in their brand in the early debates. The August 2015 debates were watched by FOUR TIMES more voters than the debates in 2011. So, when Trump inevitably abandoned his campaign, as he had always done before, the GOP figured it could use that pixie dust on a more conventional candidate, and the voters would pivot to a Rubio or, shades of 1992, yet another Bush.
It’s not unlike the Tea Party, that the conventional Republicans, such as former House Speaker John Boehner, thought they could control, but it was the Tea Party that ended up controlling them. Obviously, Boehner could not, and he ended up resigning.
Even as Trump said more and more outrageous things, there was a good chunk of the Republican electorate who were not repelled by his comments, but embraced him, because he told it “like it is,” even when it was internally illogical, not to mention racist, sexist and xenophobic.
Virtually every pundit in 2015 said that Trump had a ceiling, of 20 or 30% of the Republicans. This proved to be true when the number of candidates was in double digits, but the numbers of candidates got smaller, his numbers got larger.
If he WINS the presidency, and I think he can, especially against Hillary – polling in May is just not that definitive – then he might make it difficult for a governor or a senator or a House member to distance from him. If he LOSES, the GOP could lose the Senate.
Oh crap, what DO they do? Stand up against their party’s very likely nominee? Will that be seen as a moral stance, or as the action of a party hack, out of touch with the electorate? Which path will save their collective hides? They don’t know yet.
In some ways, I think Donald Trump in 2016 is like Barack Obama in 2008, with one slight difference. BHO represented the hope of America; “Yes, we can.” It was seen as proving that America is better than it had been. Hey, America’s not racist; we elected a black man and watched Oprah to boot. But he failed to solve racism, and the world is a scary place. The social experiment, electing the black guy, did not work out.
DJT is nostalgia, mixed with fear. “Let’s Make America Great Again.” Great, again. It was great at some unspecified period in the past, when America’s dominance and supremacy were not questioned. “Girls were girls, and men were men.” THOSE were the days. We want to get back there, or as far back as we can while keeping our smartphones. Even if he’s insincere, and is now hiding his views on minorities better now.
The Republican leadership can say no, but if the American people say yes, then the party bosses become all but irrelevant, even more insignificant than they had before. They want to back the right horse, but they can’t tell yet who that will be.
On the other hand, Leon Wolf from Red State, a conservative website, notes:
The temptation is going to be to go numb to all of this. That when the next person who we should have counted on stuns us all by actually suggesting that Donald Trump is fit to be President of the Untied States, that we just write it off with barely a second thought. There comes a certain point where you feel like you just can’t allow yourself to continue to be surprised and hurt when another person that you once respected shows that their judgment and principles forever tainted by the love of the office they hold.
Don’t. Going numb to the corruption wrought by Trump is what got us in this mess. Trump – and support for Trump – must not become the new normal in the conservative movement. Maybe it will become normal in the Republican Party, which ceased to stand for anything meaningful as an institution a long time ago, but it can’t become normal for the actual conservative voters who believe in things like limited government, equality under the law, free markets, free trade, and basic public decency.
The only way this won’t become the new normal is if you allow yourself to be hurt every time someone caves to this perversion of conservatism and the Republican party. Be horrified. Be aghast. Feel betrayed. Ask aloud to yourself, “How could you?” Ask aloud to THEM, by calling, writing, or emailing, “How could you?”
Because the minute you stop feeling that, the closer you become to assimilating it and accepting it yourself. And if that happens, the conservative movement as we know it dies.
See, much of the right is no happier with The Donald than the left is.