Until now, the GOP has always had a candidate whose turn has come to be nominated. But now, there is no one who's next in line, some old battle-scarred party warrior who will let the real powers that be run the show for four years.
Donald upset the applecart. But the worst could be yet to come. Trump refused to pledge his support to any eventual Republican nominee other than himself.
That could spell disaster for our conservatives, like an iceberg spells disaster for a big ship.
I've caught a little undercurrent of a scenario that's drifting around the internet lately.
It must be scaring the RNC and all the Republican leadership, in Congress or in the halls of high finance; those guys are always the most alert to the ever-shifting currents and sandbars of our politics. If I know about it, they've known about it for a lot longer, that's for sure.
Trump is beginning to look increasingly secure. He came out of nowhere, and now has about 20% of the early polls in his pocket. Trump has also gotten 100% of all the media and party attention. That 20% of his is the party base's most likely voters.
If polling is accurate, about 45% of the voters are going to vote Republican, and 47% will vote Democratic. If Trump makes good on his presently unsaid threat of going independent if he's shut out in any way by the party, and actually keeps his support if he makes good on his threat, that changes the election scenario drastically.
Trump keeps his 20%.
The Republican nominee then has only 25%.
And the Democrats still have their 47%.
If Trump goes independent, and takes another 5% of the Republican base with him, the Republican party could come in 3rd in a 3-way race. The actual percentages can be twiddled, but the possible outcome remains the same.
We have Hillary, and we have Bernie. While one may pull off an unexpected triumph over the other, neither will change the overall picture facing the Republicans. Trump is not attracting unhappy Democrats. Bernie is. Hillary is.
Trump is no Ross Perot. Perot did attract some Democrats because he knew lots of facts, and he wasn't an egomaniac. Trump is where he is because he's an up-front, honest egomaniac and makes no apologies for being so. And he finally found the right set of talking points that allow him to flex his media muscles at last. Just at the right time for him, too.
We think Hillary may have a problem with trustworthiness, and that may be true, but who trusts Donald Trump? Nobody. Not even his supporters. They don't care. They just want to watch the hand grenades fly, and they want to see explosions follow.
Donald will most likely do what he says he will do, or make an good attempt, but that doesn't even matter.
What his supporters, and lots of uncommitted and indifferent voters want is a Congress that's pulled off the special interest teat, crying and screaming in despair, and a President who tells all the special interests and their big money to go to hell.
That other thing, the fence the Mexicans will be forced to pay for, and the overturn of our constitutional citizenship's qualifications, is just piffle.
No one with any understanding of our Constitution, our government, or has more intelligence than an anvil, knows the issue is impossible to achieve.
Over half of us won't go along with it anyway, but it's all red-meat tasty for the conservative base. They want action, God Damn It, the more the better. The banks had their turn screwing us up, so it's their turn now!
What will become of the Republican Party? It has been over 150 years since there was a viable 3rd party in our government, and 100 years since there was a real possibility of an independent winning the Presidency.
If Teddy Roosevelt couldn't pull it off, Donald Trump won't. But he could make latter-day Whigs out of the Republicans.
Can the Republicans ever come back together after being shattered so thoroughly? Are they able to shed all their old dead skin, all their heavy monetary supporters, and all their social agendas and still remain conservative? If the party is nothing but RINOs, or has no RINOs at all, can it ever win the White House again?
More importantly, can they accomplish re-creating their party in just 4 years after a 2016 defeat? Are there any universally pressing issues so important to the entire nation that they will be allowed more time?
I don't see any. The GOP's problems are theirs alone. There is no new Civil War on our horizon.
The Republican quandary challenges us Democrats… What would a re-formed Republican party be? Would any Democratic voter of the past be attracted to it in enough numbers to make it a potent contender once again? Would a more liberal party be their key? If so, where do we go?
What could we become if the Democratic party was so dominant that it faced to serious challenge to it for many years?
Historically, neither party has been a paradigm of righteousness and good behavior. Are we any less vulnerable to corruption than they are?
Our Constitution is designed to be a 2-party system. While a state can be governed by 3rd party or independent leadership, the federal government depends on only 2 major parties to work as designed.
One party needs to lead the nation, and the other needs to oppose the leaders. That's the way our founders saw it. The public welfare always needs to have a hammer and an anvil, one to hammer against the other as a way of making strength.
There has never been a vacuum, as neither party has ever kept a solid consensus among us all for more than a couple of minutes, but the founders were thinking correctly. We still have a working government built on our first Constitution, and that document took a hell of a beating, hammer and anvil, for 4 years of a war that should have split this nation in two, but did not.
I know nothing. But the possibility sure bears some serious contemplation for all of us.