Will Trump drop out?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Let's be realistic: Trump is toast.  Will he step aside on his own, be forced out by the RNC, or try to hang in there?

[Incipimus iterum]

I highly doubt it.

[rafta_rafta]

No, his ego won't allow it

[Ljube]

Let's be realistic: Trump is toast.  Will he step aside on his own, be forced out by the RNC, or try to hang in there?

If I had a nickel every time people said Trump was toast...

[DrScholl]

He's too arrogant to drop out and the RNC isn't going to force him out simply because they still want to have a chance to win the Presidency for SCOTUS appointments.

[Xing]

I can't imagine Trump dropping out under any circumstances.

[hurricanehink]

Votes are being cast already. I can't see him dropping out.

[angus]

What?  Drop out?  Why would he drop out now? 

I've been saying that his presidential campaign was just one big publicity stunt.  I could be wrong, but that's how it seems to me.  Win or lose, it's free publicity for Donald Trump.  I think he has gone further than he imagined that he would, but he has also found that it is tougher than he thought.  However, he got hooked somewhere along the way.  I think he still enjoys the free publicity, and he hasn't forgotten that this was his original goal, but it has become addictive for him.  He'll stay in till it's over.  He may not even get out then.  It's hard to imagine The Donald making a concession speech to anyone.

[Hermit For Peace]

Glad I'm not a Republican.

[Helsinkian]

Could he even theoretically be replaced at this stage by another republican? Early voting is already going on.

[Pyro]

This thread's title makes me nostalgic for the primary season

[Maxwell]

no he will not drop out. He will drag the GOP into the ground with him.

[PeteB]

I highly doubt it. RNC should have stopped him when they had a chance. It does not make sense to do so now - they would just appear stupid AND indecisive.

However I always believed that Trump would step down if he got the right offer (benefits for his business and immunity from future active federal investigations), but only Clinton could make that, and there is very little incentive for her to do so.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Not unless someone who is entirely suitable to us in the Trumpletariet is put on the ticket in his place. So they need a literal Trumpist. Someone like Jeff Sessions.

As far as I'm concerned, we already won the election. We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots. Whatever good happens next is icing on the cake and has been from the moment Trump's son put him over the top on the convention roll call.

[BoAtlantis]

Why would he? He's gained his fan base by boasting about this type of behavior. His fan base supports him because they approve of it.

[ag]

Not unless someone who is entirely suitable to us in the Trumpletariet is put on the ticket in his place. So they need a literal Trumpist. Someone like Jeff Sessions.

As far as I'm concerned, we already won the election. We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots. Whatever good happens next is icing on the cake and has been from the moment Trump's son put him over the top on the convention roll call.

If he is not a rapist, he is not a real Trumpista.

[angus]

We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots.

Really?  The roots of the Republican party grow in well-fertilized soil.  It is the soil of nativists and nationalists, to be sure, but it is also the soil of free trade and market economics, and of individual responsibility.  Trump's appeal to the protectionist elements of the working class, and his constant bragging about cheating the system, doesn't restore control to the old guard.  It upends the party.  His success is probably the result of a number of factors, including Nixon's cynical Southern Strategy of the 1960s, but it has created more instability than stability in the Republican party.  

Whether I am correct in assuming that Trump is megalomaniacal self-aggrandizer who is in it mostly for the free publicity probably has no objective answer, but I think it remains to be seen whether Trump's followers have won control of the GOP.  Or of anything.  They may be following a madman on a highway to Hell, in some heady combination of willful ignorance and instant gratification brought on by a temporary voice for their paranoia. 

I'm not picking on his followers--we all need a hero from time to time--but to suggest that Trump's followers have somehow wrested control of the Republican Party is not borne out by the fact that most elected Republicans are, at best, lukewarm to the idea of his candidacy.  And that's putting it generously.

[uti2]

We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots.

Really?  The roots of the Republican party grow in well-fertilized soil.  It is the soil of nativists and nationalists, to be sure, but it is also the soil of free trade and market economics, and of individual responsibility.  Trump's appeal to the protectionist elements of the working class, and his constant bragging about cheating the system, doesn't restore control to the old guard.  It upends the party.  His success is probably the result of a number of factors, including Nixon's cynical Southern Strategy of the 1960s, but it has created more instability than stability in the Republican party.  

I think it remains to be seen whether the trumpets have won control of the GOP.  Or of anything.

The old guard were the protectionists and isolationists, the neocons only came in under nixon.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Not unless someone who is entirely suitable to us in the Trumpletariet is put on the ticket in his place. So they need a literal Trumpist. Someone like Jeff Sessions.

As far as I'm concerned, we already won the election. We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots. Whatever good happens next is icing on the cake and has been from the moment Trump's son put him over the top on the convention roll call.

Yeah, we won the election by losing it!

Nonsense.

Yes. Because now we can purge ourselves of this mediocre sense of life that the party seems to collectively have. If this party nominated, say, Marco Rubio, we could have very well won the election but died out quicker in the future than if we lose with Trump build a new movement and coalition around the same principles.

We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots.

Really?  The roots of the Republican party grow in well-fertilized soil.  It is the soil of nativists and nationalists, to be sure, but it is also the soil of free trade and market economics, and of individual responsibility.  Trump's appeal to the protectionist elements of the working class, and his constant bragging about cheating the system, doesn't restore control to the old guard.  It upends the party.  His success is probably the result of a number of factors, including Nixon's cynical Southern Strategy of the 1960s, but it has created more instability than stability in the Republican party. 

I think it remains to be seen whether the trumpets have won control of the GOP.  Or of anything.

The old guard were the protectionists and isolationists, the neocons only came in under nixon.

And what good have the neocons done us?

[GeorgiaModerate]

Not unless someone who is entirely suitable to us in the Trumpletariet is put on the ticket in his place. So they need a literal Trumpist. Someone like Jeff Sessions.

As far as I'm concerned, we already won the election. We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots. Whatever good happens next is icing on the cake and has been from the moment Trump's son put him over the top on the convention roll call.

Yeah, we won the election by losing it!

Nonsense.

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

Not unless someone who is entirely suitable to us in the Trumpletariet is put on the ticket in his place. So they need a literal Trumpist. Someone like Jeff Sessions.

As far as I'm concerned, we already won the election. We restored control of the Republican Party to the grassroots. Whatever good happens next is icing on the cake and has been from the moment Trump's son put him over the top on the convention roll call.

Yeah, we won the election by losing it!

Nonsense.

"We had to destroy the village in order to save it."

"We had to kill the perfect man in order to make the lesser men pure."

[angus]

The old guard were the protectionists and isolationists, the neocons only came in under nixon.

Interesting response.  I'm aware that Lincoln called himself a Henry Clay Tarrif Whig, and that he was something of a protectionist.  He was also known, like George W. Bush, for wrapping himself up in God and the Flag.  (Some things about the GOP haven't changed.)  But the snarky, tax-evading tendency of Donald Trump seems so foreign from the typically square Republican candidates of the twentieth century.  Or is a double negative.  The Alan Greenspans of the world were modern Republicans (objectivists, sort of), but their brand of slick came with neoconservatism, under Reagan and GHW Bush.  What's the thread?  If the GOP is to have any defining characteristic, it must have some unbroken thread.  Isolationism and protectionism isn't it.

[Lexii, harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy]

lolNO (sane)

[dspNY]

Republicans in DC are in an emergency meeting to discuss contingency plans if Trump is not the nominee. They have no way to force him off the ticket because all the ballots are printed in almost every state and early voting has started in a bunch of states

[nclib]

Of course not. But if the Repubs replace him a month before the election with another Repub, Clinton would still win.