Republican Leadership needs to Step Up

[yossarian22c]

Romney on Trump

On the other hand, if we make improvident choices, the bright horizon I’ve described will not materialize. And let me put it very plainly. If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.
...
His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.
...
So even though Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.
...
Mr. Trump’s bombast is already alarming the allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies.
...
I’m afraid that when it comes to foreign policy he is very, very not smart.
...
Donald Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin, at the same time he has called George W. Bush a liar. That is a twisted example of evil trumping good.
...
Dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark. He claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into Iraq.
...
Haven’t we seen before what happens when people in prominent positions fail the basic responsibility of honorable conduct? We have. And it always injures our families and our country.
...
Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.
...
He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers.
...
His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.

I’m convinced America has greatness ahead. And this is a time for choosing. God bless us to choose a nominee who will make that vision a reality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/us/politics/mitt-romney-speech.html?_r=0

Despite all of this virtually every elected Republican says they will support the Nominee of the Republican party.  That is insane.  Trump is a bully and extraordinarily authoritarian.  As DW pointed out when told that military leaders say his orders are illegal he says the military will carry them out because he is a leader.  The honest evaluations of the damage a trump presidency are undercut when they basically say yeah but Hilary would be worse because she is a Democrat.  Hilary is a known quantity, the country didn't fall apart under Bill and we could expect a pretty similar admin with Hilary.  Hilary is a mainstream career politician, you may disagree with her policies and some of her decisions but she is pretty much be a typical centrist president.  No democracy ending, world war starting, autocrat. 

[D.W.]

On the bright side,  they don't say they will support Trump, they say "the candidate".  Is it possible this isn't just wishful thinking?  Could they be telegraphing that he will not be the party's nominee, delegate count be dammed?

[Pete at Home]

Romney on Trump

On the other hand, if we make improvident choices, the bright horizon I’ve described will not materialize. And let me put it very plainly. If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.
...
His proposed 35 percent tariff-like penalties would instigate a trade war and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.
...
So even though Donald Trump has offered very few specific economic plans, what little he has said is enough to know that he would be very bad for American workers and for American families.
...
Mr. Trump’s bombast is already alarming the allies and fueling the enmity of our enemies.
...
I’m afraid that when it comes to foreign policy he is very, very not smart.
...
Donald Trump says he admires Vladimir Putin, at the same time he has called George W. Bush a liar. That is a twisted example of evil trumping good.
...
Dishonesty is Donald Trump’s hallmark. He claimed that he had spoken clearly and boldly against going into Iraq.
...
Haven’t we seen before what happens when people in prominent positions fail the basic responsibility of honorable conduct? We have. And it always injures our families and our country.
...
Here’s what I know. Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.
...
He’s playing the members of the American public for suckers.
...
His domestic policies would lead to recession. His foreign policies would make America and the world less safe. He has neither the temperament nor the judgment to be president and his personal qualities would mean that America would cease to be a shining city on a hill.

I’m convinced America has greatness ahead. And this is a time for choosing. God bless us to choose a nominee who will make that vision a reality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/04/us/politics/mitt-romney-speech.html?_r=0

Despite all of this virtually every elected Republican says they will support the Nominee of the Republican party.  That is insane.  Trump is a bully and extraordinarily authoritarian.  As DW pointed out when told that military leaders say his orders are illegal he says the military will carry them out because he is a leader.  The honest evaluations of the damage a trump presidency are undercut when they basically say yeah but Hilary would be worse because she is a Democrat.  Hilary is a known quantity, the country didn't fall apart under Bill and we could expect a pretty similar admin with Hilary.  Hilary is a mainstream career politician, you may disagree with her policies and some of her decisions but she is pretty much be a typical centrist president.  No democracy ending, world war starting, autocrat.

I disagree.  Under Bill Clinton, we saw federal police thuggishness the like we had not seen since Chicago 1968.  We saw the Kosovo war where we actually supported terrorism.  Don't credit Clinton for the Internet bubble.  And Hillary has signaled her intent by using the old guard such as Mad Albright to argue for her.  Obama at least knows you don't handle internal kooks by sending in the jackboots.  You don't shoot pregnant women and babies just because their hubby sawed two inches off a shotgun.  Clinton gave us Waco and Oklahoma City.  Obama saved us from that by turning the Oregon thing over to people who aren't psychotic. 

[Fenring]

Without needing to say one nice thing about Trump or even like him, I still think roughly every point of Romney's speech is complete hooey. Romney is the ultimate example of a company man who will say anything the party believes, and now they're desperate to do anything they can to discredit Trump including throwing failed candidates after him. In the first debate (I think) the candidates were all asked point blank in almost a kind of coercive question whether they would take an oath to support the final candidate, whoever it was. Looks like that was just a bunch of rubbish, wasn't it? But I don't want this to sound like an attack on the GOP as a whole, but rather at the leaders of the RNC who no doubt are about an honorable as the leaders of the DNC. As much as Trump may actually be a bad President, the current mad scrambling to attack him reveals far more than it intends; namely that the RNC has zero interest in democracy or in the will of the people, but only in continuity of their special revolving door of groomed (i.e. corrupted) patsies. Incidentally I feel the same way right now about the DNC and Hillary, it's just happening in the reverse direction where she is their special groomed patsy.

[yossarian22c]

Trump is a classic demagogue.  He gains popularity by playing on fears of the other (Muslims, immigrants), "bomb their families", "force the military to execute illegal orders", "waterboard and more".  These are not the statements of someone who should be leading a democracy.  Nothing good comes from a true bully having the bully pulpit.  And bully is the nicest word I can think of for Trump, his rhetoric and style make me think of a 21 century Hitler*.

*I think my record shows I don't throw around Nazi/Hitler references lightly.  But Hitler was elected by a plurality (not a majority) based on demonizing the other (Jews/Gypsies/etc) and then ended democracy in Germany.  I don't think Trump is really going to start wars and round up Muslims but that is definitely the direction his rhetoric leads the country.  However, Germans in 1932 probably thought Hitler wasn't really going to start wars and kill millions of Jews.

[yossarian22c]

Pete, I would much rather vote for Sanders than Clinton.  Hopefully Clinton learned from her husbands mistakes.  For all her flaws I don't fear her being president the way I fear Trump being president.

[Fenring]

*I think my record shows I don't throw around Nazi/Hitler references lightly.  But Hitler was elected by a plurality (not a majority) based on demonizing the other (Jews/Gypsies/etc) and then ended democracy in Germany.  I don't think Trump is really going to start wars and round up Muslims but that is definitely the direction his rhetoric leads the country.  However, Germans in 1932 probably thought Hitler wasn't really going to start wars and kill millions of Jews.

It's not terribly relevant to your position, but Hitler lost the election in 1932 to Hindenburg. He used his influence to be named Chancellor in 1933 (maybe a rough equivalent is Secretary of State), and only after burning the Reichstag and effectively assuming the role of supreme leader did the subsequent 1934 election yield him a 90% majority (and from what I read he was very displeased with the 10% of dissenters). So I guess if you're making the analogy what you should be afraid of is Trump losing and being named as VP or Secretary of State 

[Pete at Home]

Pete, I would much rather vote for Sanders than Clinton.  Hopefully Clinton learned from her husbands mistakes.  For all her flaws I don't fear her being president the way I fear Trump being president.

I hope that too, but her choice of Mad Albright leaves me little margin for hope.  Learning from her husband's mistakes while holding on to his agenda aand strategy could mean becoming an American Augustus, w3hich is a good thing or a very very bad thing depending on your point of view.  At present, her intentional niche appeal is as divisive as Trump's.

[Pete at Home]

Yosarrian, whose record seems more likely to lead us into a war against our national interest?  Has Mrs Clinton ever repudiated the Kosovo war?

[Pete at Home]

When i speak of war against our national interest, I refer to Putin's rise to power on the backlash to Kosovo.

[AI Wessex]

Sums it up pretty good...

[Greg Davidson]

Column from Leonard Pitts this morning

I'm a lifelong Republican," tweeted historian Max Boot last week, "but (the) Trump surge proves that every bad thing Democrats have ever said about GOP is basically true."

"It would be terrible," wrote Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens last week, "to think that the left was right about the right all these years."

"If he was for it, we had to be against it." — Former U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, quoted in "The New New Deal" by Michael Grunwald. The "he" is President Obama. The "we" is the Republican Party. And it is not coincidental that as the former pushes toward the end of his second term, the latter is coming apart.

http://www.news-gazette.com/opinion/columns/2016-03-06/leonard-pitts-jr-gop-incoherent-mess.html

[Mynnion]

I wonder if Fox News and the Republican establishment are becoming victims of their own success.  Fear and anger seem to be the food pushing the Trump machine.

[yossarian22c]

Clinton's more hawkish statements about Syria do worry me.  But Trump's demagoguery is actually frightening.  His mistakes aren't a failed intervention that has downwind geopolitical consequences his rhetoric is the first step to ripping apart the fabric of our society and potentially turning us into a truly evil nation.

[AI Wessex]

I wonder if Fox News and the Republican establishment are becoming victims of their own success.  Fear and anger seem to be the food pushing the Trump machine.

I don't wonder about it, but I'm surprised it happened.  Their strategy has been a business one, which is to sustain the audience the drives their revenue year after year.  I wonder if FOX might become frightened of the monster they nurtured all these years and will look for more moderate "personalities" in the near future.  The only rule in show biz is you gotta keep 'em coming back for more.

[Pete at Home]

Is there any data on how many Democrats are crossing the lines to vote Trump in the Republican primaries?

[AI Wessex]

That's hard to measure, since most states have open primaries.  I haven't heard much about it, but I imagine at least a little goes on.

[Pete at Home]

Different levels of it in different elections.  Usually there's some discussion of it.  Seems weird that no news site is discussing that this election.  I guess no one wants to peek behind the curtain this time.

if the choice is Hillary v Trump, Canadians better get started building a wall along their southern border...

[NobleHunter]

Screw building a wall, we'll build cities.

I do not believe it compatible with Canadian ideals to turn away the citizens of our friend and ally. If the American people need help, which they surely will under Cruz or Trump, then we should do what we can.

[rightleft22]

There is truth to the saying that that ‘The end is in the beginning’ and that we create what we fear.
The acceptance/pandering to the tea party has undermined the GOP.

For me the similarities to the past mirrors more Mussolini’s rise then Hitler’s

[Fenring]

There is truth to the saying that that ‘The end is in the beginning’ and that we create what we fear.
The acceptance/pandering to the tea party has undermined the GOP.

For me the similarities to the past mirrors more Mussolini’s rise then Hitler’s

How do you connect support for a libertarian group to the rise of...whatever you think is on the rise? Even if we equate Tea Party libertarians in general with the John Birch/Koch groups as being against government regulation so that private interests can run riot, how do you square this with comparing that movement to the rise of fascists who wanted to further entwine government and private ownership? Somewhere in all this I presume Trump figures into it, but I wonder how you connect those dots.

[Pete at Home]

Dont just name drop, rightLeft.  Explain with factual references, please .

[Wayward Son]

And then we have those who are Trump supporters and believe the Republican elite are ruining the party. 

[Fenring]

And then we have those who are Trump supporters and believe the Republican elite are ruining the party. 

Are they wrong? The article isn't all that bad if you ignore the parts about what god wants.

[Wayward Son]

Perhaps this gives a better perspective.

I was listening to a CPAC roundtable late last week (televised, I wasn't there) where the panelists, including The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes, discussed the basic division in the GOP today: between people who feel the party establishment has betrayed them and those who do not...

The betrayal is that the GOP promised it would destroy Obama's presidency (end it in 2012, defang it before and after) and turn back the various things he's done to damage the country and 'transform' it. But let's remember that Republicans played a high stakes game of brinksmanship in 2011, threatening to default on the national debt if President Obama didn't comply with various demands, an event totally without precedent in more than two centuries of American history. There was the Cruz government shutdown in 2013 to attempt to force yet another showdown over Obamacare. There was the successful effort to kill immigration reform in 2013. There's the current refusal to even receive the President's nomination to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, at the beginning of the fourth year of his term - again, totally unprecedented in American history. (We had serial rejections in the mid-19th century, never a refusal even to consider a nomination.) And these are only some of the most high stakes examples...

You can say all sorts of things about these folks being crazy, or extremists or whatever else. But set aside all these evaluative or partisan interpretations and one thing is fairly clear in objective terms: a large portion of the GOP is not satisfied with what can realistically be achieved by conventional political means. One might even add here working with allies on the Supreme Court to come close to overturning Obamacare on what were extremely flimsy grounds. Yes, it's a bummer to take over the House and latter the Senate and still have Obamacare. But as long as you have a relatively popular President with a veto pen, that's life. You need to elect a president too.

As I noted at the end of last month, some of this is a product of "hate debt" and "nonsense debt" - building up wildly unrealistic expectations by over-promising and trading in an increasingly apocalyptic political rhetoric. But it's not all that. Something this powerful, as we've discussed, isn't just ginned up by political leaders. It runs much deeper. But again, the overreaching point is important: The narrative of 'betrayal' - at this volume and intensity - only makes sense if you are dealing with a chunk of the electorate with expectations that are deeply unrealistic in the context of conventional political action.

That is a volatile situation when you're talking about at least a quarter of the national electorate.

That gets you Trump. It also gets you Ted Cruz. And it may get you worse still.

[Fenring]

Does this second source even have a point to make? It appears to be saying that being a Trump supporter is synonymous with believing that the GOP leadership has betrayed their promises to the people, and further, that there is no good explanation for this. Is the hidden insinuation that these people are just crazy? If so, what does that have to do with Trump? Does the writer think he made them crazy? And yet this craziness was apparently around prior to Trump's run. So something is missing. The article even suggests a plausible explanation for the feeling of betrayal (one I was thinking of before I got to that part), which is that politicians misled the people about how much power they really had to wield, and made promises for grand things. When those things didn't happen, partially because they never really had the power to just make them happen, the people (according to the article, supposedly) felt betrayed. And yet the article rejects this explanation too for no particular reason and says that's not enough to make the people feel betrayed. Really? Why not? Making false promises and posturing while accomplishing nothing isn't enough to make the people lose faith in the leadership? Some argument. Couple that with bad economic conditions and I'm surprised the people aren't much more upset than the article already thinks they are.

From my perspective the fact of the RNC (and DNC for that matter) supporting the TPP is enough by itself to call betrayal of the people of America, and Trump as it happens thinks the TPP is a horrible mistake. What about this fancy idea: what it the leadership of the RNC really has betrayed the people, and the people are now simply aware of it? Do you really need a fancy theory to explain why they feel betrayed? At that point almost anyone promising to save them from the betrayers would be welcomed. Blame the 'savior' all you want, but they are reaping what they've sowed. I'm just sad that the DNC may not learn from their mistakes and be similarly punished for it if Hillary wins.

[AI Wessex]

It appears to be saying that being a Trump supporter is synonymous with believing that the GOP leadership has betrayed their promises to the people, and further, that there is no good explanation for this. Is the hidden insinuation that these people are just crazy? If so, what does that have to do with Trump? Does the writer think he made them crazy? And yet this craziness was apparently around prior to Trump's run. So something is missing.

Trump attracts that crowd because he is both a figure and a symbol.  The worry is that once he leaves the political stage he will leave behind a void that people will attempt to rise up and fill. If he's not crazy enough to win for them crazier ones will try to lead the "movement" to their salvation.  Supposedly, less than 25% of the colonists in America supported or joined in the revolution.  The rest were either too timid or liked things the way they were.  I can see this growing to 30% of the population, and then what happens?

[Wayward Son]

It's not just that the people feel betrayed.  Through the rhetoric of the Right Wing Media (Limbaugh, Ingraham, Fox News, various politicians, etc.), they have been convinced that what liberals and Democrats have done is absolutely evil, and that voting for Republicans will stop and reverse this.  It is not a matter of compromise or improvement; it is a matter of defending what is good and righteous, with the fate of the Nation in the balance.

This message has been very successful for the Republicans for the past couple of decades.  It has energized its base and allowed them to achieve significant victories in getting candidates elected to Congress.

But it has come at a price, that being that it requires a complete victory.  You can't have a partial victory when the fate of the Nation hangs in the balance.  You either win or die, swim or sink, defeat the evil Democrats or be defeated.  And, so far, the evil Democrats haven't been defeated.  They are holding their own.

So what do you do when the stakes are so high?  Who do you turn to when you're losing the war?

A strong leader.  One who can take on the evil Democrats.  One who isn't afraid of them, can bully them into submission, can get the policies pushed through by trampling over the opposition.

Or as one Trump supporter said on NPR this morning, a guy who "isn't a pansy" like all those in Washington.

When you hear, day-in and day-out, how we are at war with those who are destroying our country, and we are losing that war, then desperate measures are called for.  Measures that might include ignoring the Supreme Court, ignoring Congress, ignoring those in the Military that what you want to do is illegal, ignoring reality if necessary (by saying that Mexico will build us a wall to keep their people out of our country  ), and just getting the job done. 

Trump supporters aren't evil or stupid.  They've been convinced, through the relentless propaganda of the Right, that we are in desperate times and that things aren't changing their way.  So they are willing to take desperate measures, because the stakes are so high.  And the one who seems the strongest right now is Trump.

Thus we get a Republican front-runner who most of the Republicans can't stand.  A person who is a liar and a bully.   A person who promises the moon, but has no real plan or experience on how to get there.

But, really, how different is he from all the demagogues that have been preaching to the Right for years?

[Pete at Home]

" Through the rhetoric of the Right Wing Media (Limbaugh, Ingraham, Fox News, various politicians, etc.), they have been convinced that what liberals and Democrats have done is absolutely evil"

What has Limbaugh said that hysterical left wingers and some leftist preachers havent been saying about conservatives since the 1970s?  Are we pretending that no one on the left compared Bush to Hitler or claimed the military invente HIV to kill black people?

Seems to me that anyone seeing the division is one party's problem is part of the problem.

[Fenring]

It is not a matter of compromise or improvement; it is a matter of defending what is good and righteous, with the fate of the Nation in the balance.

This message has been very successful for the Republicans for the past couple of decades.  It has energized its base and allowed them to achieve significant victories in getting candidates elected to Congress.

What makes you think this is different from how things were 150 years ago? Both parties were starkly opposed to one another with no hope of a middle ground. What else is new.

But it has come at a price, that being that it requires a complete victory.  You can't have a partial victory when the fate of the Nation hangs in the balance.  You either win or die, swim or sink, defeat the evil Democrats or be defeated.  And, so far, the evil Democrats haven't been defeated.  They are holding their own.

Sounds like a straw man to me. They disagree to the core with Democrats and so will obviously fight them tooth and nail. Do you think they should behave otherwise? This is party politics in a nutshell.

So what do you do when the stakes are so high?  Who do you turn to when you're losing the war?

A strong leader.  One who can take on the evil Democrats.  One who isn't afraid of them, can bully them into submission, can get the policies pushed through by trampling over the opposition.

Trump isn't their savior from the Democrats, that's just not what he's running on. Most other GOP candidates were railing on Obama and Clinton throughout the debates, and Trump did so probably the least out of all of them. In fact, you were making an argument in the other thread that people see him as the savior from the GOP leadership, not from the evil Democrats.

When you hear, day-in and day-out, how we are at war with those who are destroying our country, and we are losing that war, then desperate measures are called for.

This is the exact narrative that Washington and the media have been spinning for the last several years. Now you're going to try to pin it on Trump? Fear-mongering about ISIS, about Lybia, about Syria, about Putin - the 24 hour news cycle has been pushing these ideas relentlessly. If Trump knows how to capitalize on this public mindset then that basically means he knows how to campaign. But he certainly has nothing at all to do with people feeling this way. He is not making people scared, he's being successful at making them feel safer when he tells them how he'll take care of business.

Measures that might include ignoring the Supreme Court, ignoring Congress, ignoring those in the Military that what you want to do is illegal

Trump never said these things and you know it. But in terms of ignoring Congress, tell me, when was the last time the Congress was consulted about a military engagement? Or rephrased, when was the last time the U.S. officially declared war?

[Wayward Son]

" Through the rhetoric of the Right Wing Media (Limbaugh, Ingraham, Fox News, various politicians, etc.), they have been convinced that what liberals and Democrats have done is absolutely evil"

What has Limbaugh said that hysterical left wingers and some leftist preachers havent been saying about conservatives since the 1970s?  Are we pretending that no one on the left compared Bush to Hitler or claimed the military invente HIV to kill black people?

Seems to me that anyone seeing the division is one party's problem is part of the problem.

Although there are hysterical voices on both sides of the aisle, currently the ones on the Right have far more influence than the ones on the Left.

When someone who claims that the military invented AIDS to kill black people becomes the leading Democratic candidate, we'll talk.  Until then, recognize that this is currently a bigger problem for the Right than the Left.

[Wayward Son]

What makes you think this is different from how things were 150 years ago? Both parties were starkly opposed to one another with no hope of a middle ground. What else is new.

And that division was resolved with a Civil War that killed more Americans than any other war in our history.  It may not be new, but it's worrisome.

But it has come at a price, that being that it requires a complete victory.  You can't have a partial victory when the fate of the Nation hangs in the balance.  You either win or die, swim or sink, defeat the evil Democrats or be defeated.  And, so far, the evil Democrats haven't been defeated.  They are holding their own.

Sounds like a straw man to me. They disagree to the core with Democrats and so will obviously fight them tooth and nail. Do you think they should behave otherwise? This is party politics in a nutshell.

Although the song remains the same, it's the stridency that I find different.  Parties haven't tried to shut-down the government over their differences until recent history.  Compromise has been the order of the day.

So why do Republicans disagree to the core with Democrats now?  Why didn't they 40 years ago?  50 years ago?  Why are they calling for shutting-down the government rather than compromising and working with the opposition?  What has changed so radically, if not for the rhetoric of the Right?

In fact, you were making an argument in the other thread that people see him as the savior from the GOP leadership, not from the evil Democrats.

I was?    I don't remember that...

Whatever, why does the GOP need saving from the GOP leadership?    Isn't it because they have not be able to push through their agenda, and allowed Democrats to block it?  What other reason is there?

This is the exact narrative that Washington and the media have been spinning for the last several years. Now you're going to try to pin it on Trump? Fear-mongering about ISIS, about Lybia, about Syria, about Putin - the 24 hour news cycle has been pushing these ideas relentlessly. If Trump knows how to capitalize on this public mindset then that basically means he knows how to campaign. But he certainly has nothing at all to do with people feeling this way. He is not making people scared, he's being successful at making them feel safer when he tells them how he'll take care of business.

This is what I am saying--that Trump is the result of the narrative, not the creator of it.

Measures that might include ignoring the Supreme Court, ignoring Congress, ignoring those in the Military that what you want to do is illegal

Trump never said these things and you know it. But in terms of ignoring Congress, tell me, when was the last time the Congress was consulted about a military engagement? Or rephrased, when was the last time the U.S. officially declared war?

Didn't Trump say he would ignore certain rulings of the Supreme Court (or am I getting him mixed up with Cruz and the others)?

And, you're right, I can't think of a specific example of him specifically saying he would ignore Congress, although I think he would have to to implement some of his ideas.

But he has specifically said that, if the military said torture was illegal, he would just tell them to do it anyway, since he would be Commander-in-Chief and they have to do whatever he tells them to.  After all, everyone in the military swore allegiance to the President... 

No, I don't think I'm that far off from what Trump has said.

[AI Wessex]

This is what I am saying--that Trump is the result of the narrative, not the creator of it.

Trump is not the cause of the fire, but he is the accelerant.

[Pete at Home]

This is what I am saying--that Trump is the result of the narrative, not the creator of it.

Trump is not the cause of the fire, but he is the accelerant.

He's an accelerant, but not the only one.

[yossarian22c]

In a show of some sanity and self-respect Rubio and Kasich just hinted following the Chicago incident that they may not be able to support Trump as the nominee.  The two would make for a very interesting 3rd party run.  If they ran it would probably hand the presidency to the Dems but I could see the pair beating Trump/Christie in most states in a general election.

[D.W.]

Is it possible that the "3rd party" is Trump?  Can the GOP refuse to make Trump their nominee even if he wins the delegate majority?  Unless that's not possible by the rules, I'm becoming more and more convinced that's how it will shake out.

[AI Wessex]

They would have to violate their own Party organization rules to deny him the Party label if he has enough delegates to win the nomination.  That would be the end of the Party.

[Pyrtolin]

They would have to violate their own Party organization rules to deny him the Party label if he has enough delegates to win the nomination.  That would be the end of the Party.

And now you've put a finger on why Christie looks like he's auditioning for the role of Faust in the pictures of him standing behind Trump. On top of the economic damage that Trump could probably manage to inflict on New Jersey, he sees the the GOP's chickens coming home to roost after about a half century of setting this up.

[AI Wessex]

I can maybe see Christie as Faust, a chicken or even a butterball turkey, but the image of him roosting is a step too far.  If Trump falters, he could step in with a national campaign slogan, "Make New Jersey Great Again or Sit Down and Shut Up".  The problem is that it wouldn't fly even in New Jersey.

[Pyrtolin]

McCarthyism, John Birch Society, Southern Strategy, Welfare Queens, Demonization of the Media, etc...  there's not one thing that Trump is doing now taht hasn't been part of the GOP's authoritarian toolset to gain and hold power. The only different thing is that Trump isn't being coy about it and using dog whistles. He's just playing it for what it is in the open and pushing his supporters to far enough extremes taht cognitive dissonance and sunk costs don't give them any way to back out without paying a very heavy psychological price.

(The salute was a nice touch. Now those supporters absolutely, 100% cannot associate him with Hitler or Mussolini without indicting themselves as well. And who, rationally, would want to do that?)

Watching the GOP try to sort out what to do is fascinating. They can't use any of their traditional attacks or rules to bring him down because he's openly playing into them and using them to form his base. They can't walk back any of those divisive tactics without gutting their base and hoping they can somehow find support on the middle or the left. They can't shut him out, because then he'll take most of their base with him and render themselves irrelevant. If they actually get behind him, they have to admit taht this is exactly what they've been encouraging all along, just out on display for everyone to see.


Their best bet may be to do a squeeze play at the convention (resulting in a "mistreated" Trump running as a 3rd party), help Clinton take the democratic nomination, then hope that they can break the trance he has their base in when he tries to play the pied piper and lead his supporters in an end-around play to fill the hole that Sanders left behind.
 

Or they get Cruz to offer him a Supreme Court seat before he gets around to buying Cruz out with it.

House of Cards doesn't hold a candle, because no one would believe anyone who wrote this as fiction, even to the point that we're at now.

[AI Wessex]

It's looking increasingly unlikely that the GOP will have a contested election, and after tonight it may be a completely moot point.  But, while it's still possible , here's an article that recounts the history of previous multiple ballot conventions and an excellent rundown of the process the 2016 convention would follow if Trump somehow doesn't have enough delegates to win on the first ballot.  Remember Woodrow Wilson? He won on the 42nd ballot.