Has Trump essentially won the Republican nomination?

[wolfsblood07]

He's improved his position a bit, but he's still basically losing.

Losing the general election?   I don't think the GOP will want to deny him the nomination on the convention floor.  We should have known after Iowa, certainly after SEC Super Tuesday.  Trump won this.  The first time a major party has been successfully infiltrated by an outsider in a hostile takeover!  This is only going to get more exciting.

[wolfsblood07]

"Trump" and any form of the word "win" do not belong in the same sentence without a form of "not" in between. He is a loser. A high-energy loser, but still a loser with tiny hands.

What does that make the 16 other Republicans that ran this cycle?

_trump is a loser, but he's not the only loser in the world, or even in the Republican Party. That would be ridiculous.

Trump is a winner in every way, though he may not win the presidency.  But he did win the primaries, no one can deny that.

[wolfsblood07]

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Great. Glad to know you won't be needing 'em in November.

I love how a Hoosier disses 'flyover' states while at the same time talking up West Virginia.

I love flyover states and voted for Cruz.  But let's be real.  Trump will walk into the convention with a legitimate claim on the nomination.

[wolfsblood07]

My take on Trump's success is that it's a combination of 2 things.  One is that there is a populist strain in the Republican party that Pat Buchanan tapped into in his campaigns of the 1990s.  The populists really have a gripe now that we've had so many costly wars and we're losing our country to foreigners.  But the other component is Trump and his cult of personality.  That has expanded the populist wing immensely, and is making him almost unbeatable.