In today’s paper, there is a column by Ramesh Ponnuru in which he mostly talks about how he thinks Romney would have been the best nominee, given how things have turned out. I don’t know how Mr. 47% would have done better than last time, or indeed even have gotten the nomination, but I do get Ponnuru’s buyer’s remorse.
In the column, he brings up an important question, but fails to answer it: Why did Republicans nominate Trump? He gives a few generalities about why others didn't get it, but he never really answers the question.
Here's the answer Mr. Ponnuru: your party has spent the last 50 years pandering to racists and bigots. With the passage of civil rights laws, white men were no longer legally superior to blacks, so your party gave them a message of "hope".
Vote with us, you said, and we'll elect white men who will pass laws and appoint law enforcement officials that will keep Jim Crow alive by imprisoning blacks, punishing them more than white people who commit the same crime, and laws that will protect police who shoot unarmed black men so we can keep them down where they belong.
Vote with us, and despite the Voting Rights Act, we'll write laws and challenge the rules, and regulations that will make it difficult for people of color to vote. And we'll write laws that prevent all those blacks we locked up from ever being able to vote again.
Vote with us, and we'll stop giving handouts to black welfare queens, we'll build a wall to keep the wetbacks out, we'll protect you from the queers, we'll make sure your tax $$ don't go to poor people who will just squander their check at the track. We'll put those "Feminazis" in their place. Join us, not those 47% who just mooch off the government.
And they did vote with you, but guess what? Their lives got harder, they got poorer, and all your promises came to naught. Despite your party’s best efforts, the LGBTQ community and women steadily march toward equality, and a n—r became President. So they’ve now turned towards a demagogue in one last desperate attempt to hold onto whatever power and false superiority they have left, instead of realizing that the Republican Party didn’t really stand for anything at all except helping the 1% become the .1%.
Trump is the embodiment of your party's message from the last 50 years. He is the nominee you deserve.