What has been the worst decision/action on the GOP primary side this year?

[Indy Texas]

Thinking they could just get a handful of rich guys to write million dollar checks and everything would sort itself out.

When you can be considered a serious candidate by winning the backing of a handful of people who can donate millions of dollars to you, without having to actually go out and prove you can connect with actual voters, there's a huge margin for error.

And when the party apparatus itself has been made relatively cash poor since big donors would rather put their money in super PACs, a collective action problem arises. That happened to a lesser extent in 2012 with Sheldon Adelson and various other billionaires dumping money into ads hammering Romney to create an opening for their own preferred candidates (Gingrich and Santorum) who didn't have a chance in hell of winning.

Say what you will about campaign finance and Citizens United and all that, but the Republican Party probably wishes that those 17 candidates had to go out and get $2,700 donations from thousands of people. It would have eliminated the empty suits before the process had even began.

[Indy Texas]

Putting all the establishment money into Jeb Bush's campaign

Wouldn't be so much of a problem except that the Establishment's conception of what the GOP should be is basically the British Conservatives - across-the-board austerity, tax cuts for the super-rich and deregulation of banking and finance, while largely ignoring social/cultural issues or immigration. Jeb! was a fine candidate for that, but that agenda falls flat among actual GOP voters.