From Michael Lieber, the former GOP city captain for Bay Village, Ohio, who resigned that post last month to protest Donald Trump’s nomination as the presidential candidate for the Republican Party:
“We have thrown away the White House and a golden opportunity to save the country from Hillary Clinton. We have to save other GOP candidates in the short term by abandoning Trump. In the long term, we have to make sure we never repeat a catastrophic mistake like Trump. The 45 percent of GOP voters who allowed themselves to be conned need to do some soul-searching and become better informed and less gullible, and GOP leaders need to communicate better.”
Interestingly, almost all of the clarion calls to derail the Trump Train (Choo Choo) come from individuals who are in or want to be associated with the official conservative establishment in Washington D.C. Publications like the Weekly Standard and the American Spectator were just as skeptical of the Tea Party during the first few years of its existence because of the fear that Tea Party activism could not be controlled for the purposes of the establishment. Though there remains some handwringing on Capitol Hill about the influence of the Tea Party in Congress (the Freedom Caucus within the House and the Senate Conservative Fund are especially despised), the establishment has co-opted many Tea Party positions and has learned how to defeat the worst of the Tea Party candidates in GOP primaries. The Trump Train , on the other hand, remains largely uncontrolled. Moreover, unlike the traditional fiscal policy positions of the Tea Party, the Trump Train has been promoting protectionist and populist ideas that the Republican Party has not championed since Robert Taft tried unsuccessfully to run for the Republican Party nomination in 1952. Not surprisingly, the establishment (formerly “the movement”) conservatives fear the loss of their power in Washington and so malign the candidate and the movement that so threatens them.
Bob Dole was losing just as badly at this point in 1996 as Trump is now. The conservative establishment in 1996 did not moan and groan, like they are doing today about Trump.
George H.W. Bush never had a chance against Clinton in 1992. Conservatives moaned about his violation of his own “no new taxes” pledge, but they did not go so far as to say that we should abandon the nominee.
Let’s face it. The real reason the conservative establishment is telling us to abandon Trump is not because Trump is going to lose. Otherwise, they would have done the same with Dole and Bush. Rather, it is because the movement identified with Trump (whether or not Trump in person is as he claims to be) is a threat to the conservative establishment power base in Washington. Bush and Dole, on the other hand, never posed any threat to the D.C. status quo.
Nothing threatens scoundrels more than Real Americans with sharp pitchforks demanding that they too have a seat at the table of power. The OP is fine with billionaires like the Kochs on one side or Soros on the other side corrupting the government for their own personal gain. The OP is fine with the SCOTUS being controlled by radical leftist Jurists. The OP is fine with nominating forever and ever lackluster losers in the mold of McCain and Romney who fight their fellow Republicans with a vitriol never focused upon Democrats.
But, God forbid, Real Americans want to upset the cozy relationship that the conservative establishment has within the Washington-Wall Street status quo, and all of a sudden we are supposed to abandon Trump when we never abandoned Bush or Dole in the same situation.
The irony of all this foolish lamenting is that Trump is now leading and rising in the polls which just makes the establishment even more unhinged than it already is.