The rise of Donald Trump has been predicated on core Right Wing Republicans becoming angry at and resentful of the Establishment GOP.
So to thwart his winning the nomination, the Grand Old Party elites respond with all of their overflowing genius to enlist their most recent losing Presidential candidate, who is the very embodiment of the dishonest and insincere party establishment, to “inspire” Trump supporters not to support him.
I suppose that next we will hear Michigan Governor Rick Snyder recommend to Flint residents that they really need to vote for a Republican governor to follow him and Martin Shkreli will urge Americans to deregulate pharmaceutical companies.
A few initial things that make this GOP effort using Romney as a figurehead so farcical.
- In 2012, GOP Presidential nominee Romney fought against releasing multiple years of his tax returns, only releasing his latest return which he had been able to manipulate. Sen. Harry Reid speculated that Romney was withholding them because they would hurt Romney and Romney called it a smear. In 2016, Romney attacks Trump for not releasing years of his tax returns and speculates that it’s because they would hurt Trump.
- In 2012, Mitt Romney nearly broke the Politifact system, spouting a neverending flood of bald face lies on a daily basis. He made dishonest campaign promises, tried to scam the public on his views and flipped and flopped constantly to trick voters to support him. In 2016, Mitt Romney attacks Trump for lying to the American people, deceiving them and tricking them to vote for him.
- In 2012, core Republican voters desperately tried to find “Anyone But Mitt” to win the GOP nomination because they disliked him and the establishment he represented, elevating even 9-9-nut Herman Cain, Bible-humper Rick Santorum and loon-in-the-moon Newt Gingrich to 1st place in the polls. In 2016, Romney turns to the very core of Republicans who despise him and support Trump…to do as he says and follow him down Establishment Lane.
How ridiculously blind can the Republican establishment be? This elitist, condescending ploy using Romney to turn Trump supporters can only be seen by them as insulting. Through this, Romney is expressing that his judgement is superior to theirs, they don’t know what’s best for them but he does. It’s simply pouring gas on the Trump fire and it would be unsurprising to see Trump’s supporters become even more enthusiastic and convicted (if that’s possible) in their support of Trump because of this.
Do these GOP leaders really think that the angry, bigoted white Republicans who are so enthusiastic about Trump for voicing all of that for them, will suddenly just start obeying the smug, elitist candidate they opposed in 2012 for being the establishment tool he was?
A Trump supporter in attendance at Romney’s speech today yelled out, “You’re desperate!” Though there is probably nothing else we would ever agree on, that Trump supporter is right (for once).
The GOP is so desperate to stop Trump from destroying the GOP…that they will obliviously do it themselves first. What they are too panicked to recognize is that there is no saving the GOP from Donald Trump, there is only choosing how badly the GOP is damaged because of him.
It will be bad enough for the GOP if Trump ends up becoming their nominee as is likely. After already witnessing Trump’s dishonesty, bigotry and offensiveness and having it hammered for months by Dems in the General Election (who only need to use video of Trump and Republican attacks on Trump), a wide majority of independent (and of course minority) voters (and even Republican voters and politicians who already are swearing not to vote for Trump) will be permanently alienated from him and end up giving the Dems a sweeping win in November.
However, what will make things worse is what’s already happening. As the Republican Party establishment spends months attacking Trump to try and deny him the nomination, they will further widen the civil war within the GOP and undermine Republican voter support for Trump (that is, rank and file voters staying home) as well as turn Trump against the party even more vociferously.
Satan’s drinking buddy, Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg, has been making the media rounds “speculating” (that is, championing) how the GOP could deny Trump the nomination at the convention by cleverly using the rules, whether Trump wins the majority of delegates or just wins the most (Mitt Romney appears to be licking his chops at being drafted to steal the nom at the convention).
Again, how bat guano crazy is the GOP? They appear truly ignorant about the phenomenon of blowback and what “cause and effect” is.
Robbing Trump of the nomination at the convention only means that the Republican Establishment gets to burn down their own house instead of the political arsonist Trump doing it for them.
What exactly do they think that the most motivated section of their party which supports Trump will do in response? You know, those Repubs supporting Trump because they feel the GOP Establishment has screwed them? When the GOP establishment screws them worse than ever by stealing the nomination from their candidate?
Perhaps the GOP establishment is banking on hatred of Hillary “trumping” resentment towards them but they don’t have a clue. Yes, Trump supporters hate Hillary but it sure seems that they love Trump more than they hate her. It is astounding that GOP Elite think Trump supporters will just accept they got played again and show up enthusiastically to vote for Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz…or even Mitt Romney again who has unfairly replaced Trump.
And what do they think Donald Trump will do? How can they have such cognitive dissonance? They think Trump is so powerful in their party right now that they have to go to extreme lengths to try and block him from the nomination…yet they don’t consider how he will wield the power he retains after they have stabbed him in the back?
I would bet heavily on Trump running as an independent candidate, even if it’s too late to get on many state ballots, just out of spite. Does the GOP really doubt how vindictive Trump is? After such a blow to his ego and his not-so-far-fetched dream of becoming President, do they really think Trump will just quietly fade into the shadows?
And Trump voters look to be very loyal to him, not to the GOP, they would sure seem likely to follow him to support his independent bid.
The Republican Establishment could have dealt with the rise of Trump in a smarter and more realistic way, they could have weathered this year without such ongoing destruction. They could have accepted that they would lose the Presidency this year but allowing Trump to run and lose would allow them to label Tea Partiers as losers whose days of influence are over. The Tea Party would have finally had their candidate and their shot to prove their viability and gone down in flames, hurting the whole party in the process. The Establishment Repubs could then take their party back from the current path it’s on of fatal extremism, consigning the Tea Party to doing chores around the house and picking up the dog poop in the backyard.
Instead, by taking the path of engaging in a manipulative power struggle with its core members, becoming adversarial towards the most energized segment of its base, they have created a longer term, more disastrous, no-win situation. Heads they lose, tails they lose even worse. If Trump is their nominee after their party has tried to poison him in the minds of the public, he will be even weaker and the party will fail worse across the board. If they steal the nomination from him, many core Republicans will either support an independent bid by Trump or stay home on election day out of protest, either way, slashing the Republican turnout.
Though it boggles the mind, one should just remember that the GOP shouldn’t be expected to act any differently than its character dictates. As they’ve shown through their voter ID laws, Bush v. Gore, etc., the GOP doesn’t believe in democracy, it believes in attaining it’s goals and the power it wants, whatever it takes. So it should be no surprise that their natural response to Trump heading towards the nomination is to short circuit the democratic process and use its levers of power and skill at manipulation to try and dictate the results of their primaries.
When it comes to Donald Trump sinking the GOP or the GOP Establishment sinking their own party by trying to steal the nomination from Donald Trump, it’s all so easily explained by a fable you may know:
The Scorpion and the Frog
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion
says, “Because if I do, I will die too.”The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”Replies the scorpion: “Its my nature…”
As evidenced by where they stand on the issues, how they conduct themselves, their candidates or those in their party establishment, the current iteration of the GOP is slaved to bringing about its eventual (though not necessarily permanent) self-destruction. That is not to say that they can’t revive themselves eventually into a party that isn’t dysfunctional but after the lunacy of this year, it may take a very long time and something more than a reheated Mitt Romney as an appetizer.
AdLib, I have a request. Can I post this article on another site? The article is so good, so well thought out, I would love to share it with others. Please let me know. I will give you credit of course, and drive traffic to the site to read it if that is okay.
Hello, monicaangela. You can post the Planet link to AdLib’s article on any site you choose to, just not a C&P of the whole article. Hope this helps?
Thanks Kalima, yes it helps. AdLib has such interesting thoughts and writes such great articles, I would love to have others have the experience I have when I read them. I promise I won’t C&P the entire article. I hope I can C&P an interesting section that will draw the audience to the planet to read them. Let me know if that is okay. Thank you. 🙂
That would be good, monicaangela. A paragraph and the link.
Thank you!
So they have taken Mitt the Mummy out of mothballs again. Stupid but we know that they are.
Here is Dump’s reply. Gross but fighting like a bitchy little girl.
—-
Trump: Mitt Would’ve Gotten on His Knees for Me
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/03/03/trump-mitt-would-ve-got-on-knees-for-me.html
….” with a magnifying glass to find my Willie!”
Lol!! I believe that too. 😆 “Eskimo” Fish Fingers anyone? That’s what his hands remind me of. They’re orange too. Fat, flat and orange. Gangster fingers.
With a belly like his I bet he hasn’t seen it in quite a few years.
Good Lord, speaking about this oaf is torture. Please launch me into Outer Space. Please??
I appreciate your thoughts. You make a strong case for Romney’s hypocrisy and duplicity….and for the Machiavellian manipulations taking place to roll back the clock to 2012. As you know, I think the Mitt Romney we saw in 2011 and 2012 was manufactured to appeal to an audience that was not naturally his…thus the “I was a seriously conservative governor….” meme. And he wasn’t. He was someone who knew how to deal on both sides of the aisle. So in one way what we say today was Romney engaging in a bit of redemptive theater. And yes, I think he, and many in his circle, knew that his words would do little to nothing to change the views of the Trump fan-atics. But he was not speaking to them but to a GOP mainstream that is shrunken but still present (that the liberty caucus in the House, formerly the TP caucus, has not grown is a sign of this) and to the power brokers and big money backers to say that an alliance of those forces is required and lacking any national GOP leader he will step up. NOW…what is stepping up to…..naming the truth? fighting to take the usurper down? put himself on the line? emerge as the once and future standard bearer? That is still to be seen.
The GOP may not be able to get its’ act together; so be it.
That is not my problem.
But, The Democratic Party needs to stay together. If you lose the nomination, you support the winner. If you win, exercise good sportsmanship.
Both parties can break up into antagonistic factions if that is what people decide they want to do. That choice has consequences.
Keep in mind that there is a country to govern. This country is too large to be an insane asylum.
AdLib, some well-known people must have been reading your posts again because this same topic came up on the PBS NewsHour and some of the same comments were made. It was (I think) Stephen Moore who said that Romney only succeeded in insulting a lot of GOP voters by referring to them as “suckers” and to their candidate as “a fraud.” (As if Romney would know a fraud if it rode down to their back door in a car elevator.) He insisted that every word Romney spoke today will come back to haunt the GOP in November.
I agree with your take that it’s unlikely that Trump supporters are simply going to fall in line behind a GOP establishment candidate if the establishment does succeed in knocking Trump out of the running at (or before) the convention. Why would they?
I wonder if there’s a similar (but less intense) dynamic going on on the Dem side as well, though. The Dem establishment has its own version of Romney-like nay-sayers when it comes to Bernie Sanders’ candidacy. I know that Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem have both apologized for their remarks, but it’s hard to erase the sting (for a Bernie supporter like me) of being called — in effect — a boy-chasing, hell-bound traitor to my sex who is too dim-witted and math impaired to be able to calculate the number of super-delegates needed to win the nomination.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told to “give it up,” “get over it,” “be pragmatic,” and to recognize when I’m licked. One ardent Hillary supporter posted — the day after Super Tuesday — a graphic of a militant Hillary in body-armor, wielding a flame thrower, saying “FEEL THE BURN!?”
Call me childish, but those words and those types of images make me less inclined to vote for Hillary that I ever would have believed I could be. It isn’t that I’m a grudge-holder (hope not, anyway), it’s just the persistent sense that the Dem establishment and Hillary refuse to take seriously the point of view of Bernie’s supporters.
A lot of people backing Bernie are young people (or not so young people) is circumstances that — without exaggerating — could be called desperate. When Hillarites react with mockery, sneering condescension, or insults to that desperation, it only fuels the rage.
Just as Romney’s statements today are likely to do with Trump’s (much less decent and intelligent, if I do say so) followers.
The Planet’s own ChoiceLady has said: “Poor people are not just going to roll over and die.” And she has also lamented the way that the Democratic Party — in many ways — turned its back on non-college educated laborers in the 1960s (even mocking them), losing them (even though they might have been union members) to the GOP for generations.
I think the same could apply now. Hillary supporters are going on the assumption that Bernie people will automatically move to her camp, should Bernie lose to her. I wouldn’t be too sure of that. I think it’s wise to do whatever it takes to keep Trump from the Presidency, but I’m not sure how much snideness and condescension other Bernie people are going to tolerate before they say: “Screw it. I’m voting Green and Dr. Jill Stein.” I’ve considered that myself.
Of course, if the election looks to be very close between Hillary and Trump (or whoever) I wouldn’t throw away my vote on even a worthwhile 3rd party candidate. But if it looks as though it’s going to be a total Hillary blowout, I’d be strongly inclined to deny my vote to the camp that has — frankly — done nothing but ridicule and insult me for most of this campaign season.
“Paging Dr. Stein…”?
Hi Kes,
On behalf of the Hillary supporters, I apologize for the ignorant and dismissive comments that have been made to supporters of Bernie Sanders. I agree with you that a similar dynamic is happening on the Dem side as the GOP and it’s not healthy IMHO.
I actually like Bernie very much and I’m not a supporter of Hillary for all the trite reasons that have been trotted out. I don’t believe in gender voting, I don’t believe that having the first woman President is a reason, I don’t believe that “it’s Hillary’s turn”.
I am much more left than Hillary and like many, I’m not trilled with her, but I would still support her versus the alternative.
Bernie is terrific but I wonder how he could accomplish all that he hopes to with the current Congress. Even if the numbers changed due to more Dems being elected (which is an unknown quantity), if Pres. Obama could not get everything done that he hoped for, how could Bernie? My reasoning might be flawed, but that’s the essence of it.
As for Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem, their comments were beyond stupid and condescending. Albright has been saying this for the past 10 or more years and it was the dumbest time to trot it out again. Who the heck knows what Steinem was ‘thinking’!
I say let the GOP be the standard bearers for the vitriol and leave it out of the Dem contest. Respect each other’s point of view and get on with beating the Republicans. Please be smart people!
Look at the numbers that turned out in the primaries. More R’s than D’s. Not a good omen. Never forget the mid terms and look what happened there! I’m so afraid of short memories and complacency.
Oh, and I am a strongly opposed to super delegates in the system.
That should definitely change.
Lastly, I’m hoping big time that whoever gets the Dem nomination comes out strongly to ask their supporters to VOTE for the nominee, otherwise by default they will see a Republican, maybe even Trump in the WH! I’m even reading some Dem posters in articles say that might be a good thing to shake up the system!!! Give me strength!
Fair Comment, Fergie1. I too am fed up with the Democrats blindly following the politics pulled straight out of ‘Mean Girls”. Bernie is a shot in the arm for many, and I too wouldn’t mind if he got the nod, but, and its a big but, could he possibly fund and maintain positions that, according to most analysts, are too radical and expensive to bring to a General election? Unfortunately, I doubt it. But Kes has great points. We certainly do not need to play in the sandbox of rubbish like the GOP, and we will be getting enough crap thrown at whatever candidate is chosen to add our own invective.
Ad, there is corruption in both parties. This Romney thing is just one more sign of collusion and corruption. The RNC is against Trump and is losing the battle to make him go away.
The DNC has “stacked the deck” against Bernie just as the RNC has tried to against Trump (Drumph). In the case of the DNC, we have only to look at DWS trying to limit the debates. Look at Tulsi Gabbard quitting the DNC vice chair to support Bernie. She didn’t do that for no reason. She has said, as have I, that Hillary would be a poor commander in chief while Bernie would be a good one. That CIC job should be someone with good judgement on the use of our military. Bernie has good judgment. Hillary , not so much.
Sorry, I got off topic. Trump,Cruz, Rubio, and the other republican candidates have even worse judgement as far as CIC goes. Or for that matter any other issue.
Mittens only helped Trump solidify his hold on the republican electorate. They didn’t like Mitt very much and have no respect for him. They don’t care what anyone says negative about Trump because they know he lies and they don’t care. It is strange that the republicans who vote for Trump know he lies but they ignore that fact.
Corruption is rampant in the republican party, and nearly so in the Democratic party. Bernie is uncorruptable!
In my lighter moments I call this the “Seinfeldization” of American politics.
The torrent of puerile abuse from Trump will continue – all the way to November.
Will it succeed? There is a real risk that it will. And Trump will be elected President.
Keep in mind that there is a lot of fear, anger and free floating hostility. That all comes frustration over flat/falling incomes/loss of manufacturing, too many non whites, and the fact that GOP voters were being used.
The present is grim and the future looks just as grim.
What Romney said about Trump is true and accurate. But, that is a plus for Trump.
Many people are fully aware that he is a vulgar charlatan.
That is precisely why they will vote for him.