Once Trump becomes President the Republican Party will be effectively dead. No truly conservative, decent candidate will ever be able to win if he or she runs as a Republican. The party of Lincoln and of Reagan will have been destroyed by its own members, not by any outside forces. It will have to be rebuilt and revivified from the ground up, an almost impossible task, or a new conservative party will have to rise to take its place, a process that would take years. In the meantime, there will be no meaningful debate in American politics, as there will be only one side with any credibility. The election of Donald Trump will have done exactly the opposite of what his supporters think it will do.
I said on Monday to my husband that I wasn’t sure Trump could or would last out the campaign, as he’s known for his short attention span. At that point it was 14 weeks until election day. That’s 14 weeks of absolute, nonstop traveling, speaking, sleeping in a different bed every night, more speaking, interviews, photo ops, meetings with your staff on strategy (hmmm, maybe that’s not happening too much). It’s meals snatched whenever. It’s constant, constant pressure, knowing that every word you say, every thing you do, will be parsed and parodied and spun. In order to stick it out you have to be consumed and obsessed, not just with winning, but with your ideas and your program. Trump is certainly obsessed with the first . . .
There is actually talk in the Republican Party about what to do if Trump pulls out, and there are rules that outline the rather complicated process that would ensue. No mechanism exists for removing a nominee from the race. Makes the movement to free the delegates at the convention start to seem a little prescient, doesn’t it? And the Cruz boos to be, as I said at the time, an honor.
To read further about this whole now-we-just-have-one-credible-party idea, read the following article by David Harsanyi of The Federalist. As you will see, he is no friend of the Democrats.
“Trump Has Turned America into a One-Party State” Aug. 3, 2016