The Republican Party woke up last Wednesday and when they looked themselves in the mirror, the found Donald J. Trump staring back at them.
Their reaction has been both hilarious and horrifying. I'm trying to laugh but for some reason, I feel tears coming on.
I’ve been predicting for some time The Donald would be our next President because it’s what we deserve. Trump is everything we tell the rest of the world that we’re not, an assertion that becomes more and more difficult to defend with a straight face. It turns out the rest of the world was right about us, after all. We’re vicious, duplicitous, xenophobic, racist blowhards who value fame and fortune above all else.
My friends don’t believe Trump can win. It’s the math, stupid. There just aren’t enough angry white men in the country to elect Trump.
They see mainstream Republicans refusing to endorse the presumptive nominee, saying they won’t vote for him and believe Trump has fractured the GOP. Republicans will stay home in November; some will even vote for Hillary Clinton (even if they won’t acknowledge it publicly). The Middle Right may even stand up a real conservative like Mitt Romney to run for President. The Democrat party’s nominee won’t even need a majority to win with Trump and Romney splitting red state votes.
While there’s been plenty of righteous indignation from the Middle Right, it’s far more likely the Republican Party will pull itself together than tear itself apart. I just don’t see Trump as all that different from Ted Cruz or John Kasich or any of the other 2016 Republican candidates on social issues, women, immigration, national defense and foreign policy. For all the public gnashing of teeth, behind closed doors I think it’s business as usual. Nor do I see Republicans staying home when the alternative is Clinton or a socialist Jew from Vermont.
It’s impossible to ignore the damage Bernie Sanders and his surrogates have done, carrying the Republican Party’s water when it comes to Hillary Clinton. How will Sanders convince his followers to vote for the woman he’s demonized as an untrustworthy, unqualified, war-mongering bitch of Wall Street for the past six months?
Hillary Clinton may be the most qualified person to run for President but there’s no denying she’s seen by Republicans as some rough beast slouching towards Jerusalem. (Republicans seem conflicted when it comes to the apocalypse; some are doing everything they can to make it happen so they can catch the next bus to paradise while others seem to want to live long enough to spend their investment portfolio on their bucket lists.) Clinton will motivate Republican turnout just as Trump will motivate Democratic turnout.
Except, of course, for those Democrats who have been convinced that Hillary is as poor a choice for President as Trump. If that’s 15% of Democratic voters and they stay home in November, well...
Yeah. It is the math, stupid.
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