Republican Establishment Melt Down Over Trump

Talk about panicking. That’s what some establishment Republicans are doing over the prospects of Trump as the nominee. From the Post:

The Republican Party was in a state of pandemonium Wednesday as a clutch of independent groups scrambled to throw together a last-ditch effort to deny Donald Trump the presidential nomination, even as some party figures concluded it was now too late to stop the billionaire mogul.

The decentralized and desperate stop-Trump campaign found a possible new leader in Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, who is expected to deliver a forceful, top-to-bottom indictment of Trump in a speech on Thursday.

In a flurry of conference calls and meetings, top Republican donors and strategists laid plans for a multimillion-dollar assault on the front-runner in a series of states holding contests on March 15. Ground zero is Florida, where home-state Sen. Marco Rubio, the leading establishment candidate, is going all in to defeat Trump, who leads in the polls there.

This would be funny if it weren’t so important. One does have to wonder where the Republican establishment has been all this time. I guess they bought into the news media line of Trump can’t last. He’ll flame out. He’ll say something so outrageous that his campaign will implode. But that hasn’t happened yet. And now PANIC!

On Wednesday night, a group of more than 50 conservative foreign policy experts, including former homeland security secretary Michael Chertoff and former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick, issued an open letter calling Trump unfit for the office of president.

Like I said it would be funny if it didn’t have such major consequences. But what is so very ironic about what is happening is that the blame for this rests completely and totally at the feet of the Republicans. I’m sure the idea or thought was that at some point in time Trump would implode. Then along would come the Republicans and sweep up the Trump voters. That’s why the attacks on Trump were few and far between. Because you wouldn’t want to insult the Donald because that would be insulting his voters. And those voters are needed to further the ends of the Republican Party to get back the White House.

That’s why Ted Cruz wouldn’t push back against all the crazy things Trump said. Like everyone else, Cruz thought Trump would be a fad. Once the fad was over, Cruz would get the lions share of the Trump voters.
But that’s not what happened. Instead the Trump phenomenon grew and grew. The only small little hiccup was Iowa. Then everyone thought Trump was vulnerable. That certainly was not the case after South Carolina. And so once again the Republicans were too cute by half and put the Republican Party first before the country, thus Trump is now in the position to be the nominee.

As I’ve said before the Republicans have only themselves to blame for this. In their zeal to get back in power to first get the House then the Senate and then the presidency, they encouraged all the crazy charges against Obama. The birther movement. The charges he was a socialist. That he was going to ruin the country. They not only did nothing to stop this but actively encouraged it. All of the votes to repeal Obamacare and they know nothing would come of it. The bottom line was to get back in power.

Finally the Republican base wised up to what was going on. They realized they were being lied to by the establishment. That the establishment was the enemy. The establishment was not to be trusted. That’s the reason Boehner was forced out. So the monster that the Republican establishment helped to create and nurture, which it used to get into power, which it thought it could always control, is suddenly uncontrollable. It’s turned on its master. And along came Trump. He’s using that monster to destroy the Republican establishment and to gain the Republican nomination for president.

Sometimes you reap the whirlwind. And that’s exactly what’s happen to the Republican Party.