Inside the Republican Party’s Desperate Mission to Stop Donald Trump

[Torie]

This is a fascinating read, especially the bit about the McConnell and Senate Pub plans to just dump the Trump if he is nominated, and indeed trash him if need be, to save themselves.

The most curious thing stated in the article is that allegedly LePage, the man who just endorsed Trump and said he'd be just great, two weeks ago tried to get the Pub governors together to blast Trump whom he thought then would be a disaster. What the F happened in two weeks to LePage? Or is there more than one LePage out there? Color me confused.

[Coolface Sock #42069]

Christie probably threatened to have all of Maine's bridges closed.

[Mr. Morden]

I'm impressed to see that others have noticed Kasich's flailing arms:

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[Landslide Lyndon]

The most curious thing stated in the article is that allegedly LePage, the man who just endorsed Trump and said he'd be just great, two weeks ago tried to get the Pub governors together to blast Trump whom he thought then would be a disaster. What the F happened in two weeks to LePage? Or is there more than one LePage out there? Color me confused.

Umm, after all these  years haven't you noticed that he is slightly insane?

[Mr. Morden]

McConnell's Plan B:

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I'm anticipating that the Republican Convention this summer will be the most entertaining in decades.

[President Johnson]

McConnell's Plan B:

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I'm anticipating that the Republican Convention this summer will be the most entertaining in decades.

Yeah, but not just the convention...

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

The party created this mess. By pandering to Tea Partiers and xenophobes more and more in recent years, they've welcomed the crazies into the party. Well, now the crazies dominate the base. What did you expect? I predicted this (albeit not with Trump as the candidate... nobody really predicted that) years ago when GOP officials kept increasingly giving in to and supporting Tea Partiers' unreasonable demands.

[PeteB]

This is a fascinating read, especially the bit about the McConnell and Senate Pub plans to just dump the Trump if he is nominated, and indeed trash him if need be, to save themselves.

The most curious thing stated in the article is that allegedly LePage, the man who just endorsed Trump and said he'd be just great, two weeks ago tried to get the Pub governors together to blast Trump whom he thought then would be a disaster. What the F happened in two weeks to LePage? Or is there more than one LePage out there? Color me confused.

Very interesting read - thanks for posting!

GOP gets a lot of flak for not being able to organize a viable opposition to Trump but IMHO the problem may not be with the party, but with the available candidates themselves! Romney and others are disappointed that others won't coalesce around Rubio, failing to see that Rubio makes Obama in 2008 look experienced. In a normal election year, Rubio would be one of the also-runs, waiting for another 8 years to mount a serious challenge, while proving himself in the business world. Similarly, in a normal election year, Cruz would be a fringe right candidate, ignored by most. I won't even waste time commenting on Carson. And while Kasich is the only viable option and would probably make a decent President, he gets forgotten in this Reality TV election, and is even asked to step aside for a rookie?!

Is it any wonder that the GOP is confused?

[Torie]

The party created this mess. By pandering to Tea Partiers and xenophobes more and more in recent years, they've welcomed the crazies into the party. Well, now the crazies dominate the base. What did you expect? I predicted this (albeit not with Trump as the candidate... nobody really predicted that) years ago when GOP officials kept increasingly giving in to and supporting Tea Partiers' unreasonable demands.

Yeah, but much of the Trump base is not tea partiers at all, who tend to be focused on fiscal issues and the like. It's more about the estranged working and lower middle class concerned about their standard of living and buying into Trump's protectionism, both as to trade, and as to immigration, with a loathing of Muslims mixed in.

[Mister Mets]

This is a fascinating read, especially the bit about the McConnell and Senate Pub plans to just dump the Trump if he is nominated, and indeed trash him if need be, to save themselves.

The most curious thing stated in the article is that allegedly LePage, the man who just endorsed Trump and said he'd be just great, two weeks ago tried to get the Pub governors together to blast Trump whom he thought then would be a disaster. What the F happened in two weeks to LePage? Or is there more than one LePage out there? Color me confused.

The article ended with the LePage endorsement.

That one is a bit weird. LePage in his late 60s and still has three years left as Governor. I don't really see what he gains from an endorsement.

[Landslide Lyndon]

This is also very enlightening about Republicans' current predicament.

https://storify.com/DemFromCT/david-frum-on-the-state-of-the-republican-party

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election.

This ... will not work out well. If anything it will cause the Trump phenomena to have more lasting repercussions for the GOP.

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beyond parody. More reason to believe paid political strategists are less Machiavellian villains and more mentally subnormal non-entities. No wonder even the famously delusional rubes of the GOP donor base failed to bite.

[Torie]

This is also very enlightening about Republicans' current predicament.

https://storify.com/DemFromCT/david-frum-on-the-state-of-the-republican-party

Ah, your use of the term "predicament" is way too low energy to describe it all. Much more apropos is a considerably higher energy word such as "crisis."

[Volrath50]

This ... will not work out well. If anything it will cause the Trump phenomena to have more lasting repercussions for the GOP.

So the GOP establishment's plan for dealing with their voters having rejected them and chosen a candidate that basically said they were full of sh**t, is to run attack ads against the candidate their voters chose in an attempt to win them back.

Genius. Pure genius. I can't see how this could possibly not work.

[Torie]

This ... will not work out well. If anything it will cause the Trump phenomena to have more lasting repercussions for the GOP.

So the GOP establishment's plan for dealing with their voters having rejected them and chosen a candidate that basically said they were full of sh**t, is to run attack ads against the candidate their voters chose in an attempt to win them back.

Genius. Pure genius. I can't see how this could possibly not work.

We will deal with that conundrum later. Be patient. Some of it might involve some of the candidates supporting Trump in a pro forma manner, but then taking out ads making clear that on various issues, they take exception to Trump's point of view. Yeah, it does seem rather lame really. So, yeah, let's not discuss this further right now. Later dude. We will think of something.

Of course, if after the nomination, it is demonstrated that Trump committed tax fraud, and the IRS is going to prosecute him, then they can withdraw their endorsement, and hopefully the Trumpeters will be thinned out, and/or suck it up, and still vote for the senate Pubs who bailed, understanding that they had to. So another track to contemplate is the winning the lottery ticket track as it were.

If we keep working on this, maybe we will come up with enough tracks that it will become a veritable railroad yard. Well given it's the Trump, let's think big, really big, and go for it becoming Penn Station and Grand Central Station combined. Ah, that's the ticket!

[traininthedistance]

The party created this mess. By pandering to Tea Partiers and xenophobes more and more in recent years, they've welcomed the crazies into the party. Well, now the crazies dominate the base. What did you expect? I predicted this (albeit not with Trump as the candidate... nobody really predicted that) years ago when GOP officials kept increasingly giving in to and supporting Tea Partiers' unreasonable demands.

Yeah, but much of the Trump base is not tea partiers at all, who tend to be focused on fiscal issues and the like. It's more about the estranged working and lower middle class concerned about their standard of living and buying into Trump's protectionism, both as to trade, and as to immigration, with a loathing of Muslims mixed in.

That's cute that you think the Tea Party was ever motivated by "fiscal issues."

[RogueBeaver]

If the donor class would grow a pair, they'd pay $100M for a death star. Worst thing Trump does is call them names.

[Torie]

The party created this mess. By pandering to Tea Partiers and xenophobes more and more in recent years, they've welcomed the crazies into the party. Well, now the crazies dominate the base. What did you expect? I predicted this (albeit not with Trump as the candidate... nobody really predicted that) years ago when GOP officials kept increasingly giving in to and supporting Tea Partiers' unreasonable demands.

Yeah, but much of the Trump base is not tea partiers at all, who tend to be focused on fiscal issues and the like. It's more about the estranged working and lower middle class concerned about their standard of living and buying into Trump's protectionism, both as to trade, and as to immigration, with a loathing of Muslims mixed in.

That's cute that you think the Tea Party was ever motivated by "fiscal issues."

What do you think animated them? Got any polls from back when (i.e., when they were the talk of the town, rather than just so yesterday, as is the case now) as to what they thought?

[windjammer]

Well,
If Trump is the nominee, they won't be able to save the senate. If they could hold the house, that would be a good night for them.

[Volrath50]

Well,
If Trump is the nominee, they won't be able to save the senate. If they could hold the house, that would be a good night for them.

They especially won't be able to save the senate if they start running non-stop attack ads against Trump. That probably won't stop a Trump nomination, and it will just hurt down-ballot republicans in November.

The GOP should just accept they are probably stuck with Trump and try to make the best of the situation.

[Ronnie]

If McConnell thinks he can forever get away with flipping the bird to the base of his party, then the GOP will suffer from the consequences of this election cycle for far longer than just 2016.

[Volrath50]

If McConnell thinks he can forever get away with flipping the bird to the base of his party, then the GOP will suffer from the consequences of this election for far more than just 2016.

Pretty much. The whole Trump phenomena is in large part because many Republicans feel abandoned by the establishment. The establishment telling them they are stupid and wrong for having chosen Trump is not going to win the crowd back over.

[Lyin' Steve]

The party created this mess. By pandering to Tea Partiers and xenophobes more and more in recent years, they've welcomed the crazies into the party. Well, now the crazies dominate the base. What did you expect? I predicted this (albeit not with Trump as the candidate... nobody really predicted that) years ago when GOP officials kept increasingly giving in to and supporting Tea Partiers' unreasonable demands.

Yeah, but much of the Trump base is not tea partiers at all, who tend to be focused on fiscal issues and the like. It's more about the estranged working and lower middle class concerned about their standard of living and buying into Trump's protectionism, both as to trade, and as to immigration, with a loathing of Muslims mixed in.

That's cute that you think the Tea Party was ever motivated by "fiscal issues."

What do you think animated them? Got any polls from back when (i.e., when they were the talk of the town, rather than just so yesterday, as is the case now) as to what they thought?

They were just people who watched a lot of Fox News and listened to a lot of Talk Radio and got worked up into a hysteria about how Obama wanted to destroy America.  There wasn't any particular motivating factor, "financial issues" was just the excuse given but it could have been anything.  It all started with the great Obamacare fabrications tour that the GOP undertook in Summer 09, where they went around the country whipping people up into a frenzy with lies about death panels and rationing and $100,000 deductibles.

[Torie]

The party created this mess. By pandering to Tea Partiers and xenophobes more and more in recent years, they've welcomed the crazies into the party. Well, now the crazies dominate the base. What did you expect? I predicted this (albeit not with Trump as the candidate... nobody really predicted that) years ago when GOP officials kept increasingly giving in to and supporting Tea Partiers' unreasonable demands.

Yeah, but much of the Trump base is not tea partiers at all, who tend to be focused on fiscal issues and the like. It's more about the estranged working and lower middle class concerned about their standard of living and buying into Trump's protectionism, both as to trade, and as to immigration, with a loathing of Muslims mixed in.

That's cute that you think the Tea Party was ever motivated by "fiscal issues."

What do you think animated them? Got any polls from back when (i.e., when they were the talk of the town, rather than just so yesterday, as is the case now) as to what they thought?

They were just people who watched a lot of Fox News and listened to a lot of Talk Radio and got worked up into a hysteria about how Obama wanted to destroy America.  There wasn't any particular motivating factor, "financial issues" was just the excuse given but it could have been anything.  It all started with the great Obamacare fabrications tour that the GOP undertook in Summer 09, where they went around the country whipping people up into a frenzy with lies about death panels and rationing and $100,000 deductibles.

Well health care seems like a fiscal issue to me (you seem to be implying it was mostly just a proxy for Obama hate, you know with a racial aspect perhaps), but anyway, here is an article with some numbers about Tea Party people's beliefs, and it seems to mostly involve fiscal issue, combined with an "attitude," as in angry, rather then well, Paul Ryan type cool.

[Lyin' Steve]

The party created this mess. By pandering to Tea Partiers and xenophobes more and more in recent years, they've welcomed the crazies into the party. Well, now the crazies dominate the base. What did you expect? I predicted this (albeit not with Trump as the candidate... nobody really predicted that) years ago when GOP officials kept increasingly giving in to and supporting Tea Partiers' unreasonable demands.

Yeah, but much of the Trump base is not tea partiers at all, who tend to be focused on fiscal issues and the like. It's more about the estranged working and lower middle class concerned about their standard of living and buying into Trump's protectionism, both as to trade, and as to immigration, with a loathing of Muslims mixed in.

That's cute that you think the Tea Party was ever motivated by "fiscal issues."

What do you think animated them? Got any polls from back when (i.e., when they were the talk of the town, rather than just so yesterday, as is the case now) as to what they thought?

They were just people who watched a lot of Fox News and listened to a lot of Talk Radio and got worked up into a hysteria about how Obama wanted to destroy America.  There wasn't any particular motivating factor, "financial issues" was just the excuse given but it could have been anything.  It all started with the great Obamacare fabrications tour that the GOP undertook in Summer 09, where they went around the country whipping people up into a frenzy with lies about death panels and rationing and $100,000 deductibles.

Well health care seems like a fiscal issue to me (you seem to be implying it was mostly just a proxy for Obama hate, you know with a racial aspect perhaps), but anyway, here is an article with some numbers about Tea Party people's beliefs, and it seems to mostly involve fiscal issue, combined with an "attitude," as in angry, rather then well, Paul Ryan type cool.

It wasn't racial.  Just like the Trump campaign, there were some racists who supported it for their own reasons, but that wasn't its fault.
It was just a lot of misguided and poorly informed people who had been listening to Glenn Beck talk about how the world was going to be destroyed, Obama was a secret communist, etc. Hannity was saying he was "honestly terrified for the future of our country, this man is capable of anything."  Limbaugh and his radio cohort were talking about how Obama was going to double the national debt which would lead to the economic ruin of the country... if you listened to enough of this stuff you started to panic and feel like everything really was about to go to hell.  And the Democrats were bludgeoning Obamacare through Congress, so you could see that they were really capable of making things happen.  Somebody had to stop them!

Then Fox News starts organizing these "people's uprisings."  There's a lot of language and symbolism that harkens back to the American Revolution to give it this sheen of patriotism and purity.  It's promoted as the solution by all these people who were just telling you about the problem.  You've been gripped by panic and anger and fear for months and now a helping hand is extended from the darkness by the people you see as experts on how to rescue America.  Of course you grab it.

So you go to a tea party rally.  You're not exactly sure what you're doing there but you know that you hate hate hate Obama because he's going to destroy the country, and you remember a few of the reasons why he's going to do so from the shows you've watched and listened to.  Because "Obamacare is going to throw people off their insurance and cost the country a fortune" and things like that that you can repeat into the camera.  Most of it is fiscal-related stuff.  But that's not really the point.  Your'e not there because you're some damn economist who feels like the country's fiscal situation is tenuous.  You're there because you've become panicked and terrified of what Obama's going to do just as a whole, and the fiscal aspects are the easiest punchlines to remember and get angry about.