This is really going to happen, swear the few remaining Republicans clinging to a few last scraps of dignity. We're going to sabotage the takeover of the Republican Party by Birther Von Clownstick even if it costs us any hope of the presidency.
Republican strategist Liz Mair, who has become one of the public faces of the anti-Trump crowd, tells Mother Jones that she's been having conversations with other leading conservatives opposed to Trump about a variety of backup options since Trump's last remaining rivals, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, dropped out of the race last week. One option, should they fail to recruit a viable candidate to run nationwide, is to get conservative candidates to run independent, single-state bids in as many states as possible.
So option one is to find a magical rainbow-spitting unicorn and put him up as a third party candidate, but if that unicorn can't be found or would rather spend more time spitting rainbows with his own family then they'll recruit 50, or maybe 20 or 10, regular non-magical cocker spaniels and run them for president in their various individual home states. They won't win, mind you, but the theory is that it might at least be able to get depressed "real" Republicans to still come to the polls on election day. Ignore Donald Trump, you sad sacks: If you come out to vote, we'll at least let you pet this dog!
A popular name at the top of the ballot in certain states could give anti-Trump Republicans who were thinking of sitting out the election a reason to go to the polls and vote for other Republicans on the ballot. "The main logic behind that, from what I can glean," Mair says, "is that people are really worried about down-ballot in that situation."
Much of the rest of the article is devoted to the insistence that this could really happen and would really work, so let me just interject here with my regular reminder that this could Not really happen and would Not really work, because it is based on the presumption that there is a non-microscopic percentage of the Republican Party that still has either dignity or a few ideals of their own, and we've seen absolutely no evidence during the entire Obama presidency that such a thing exists, or that the party has any ideology whatsoever than despising the sitting president and/or the very notion of a government in general. The far more likely outcome is the one we're seeing play out: Donald Trump captures the nomination, and the Republican Party slides in behind him a la Chris Christie, pretending they were there all along. Build that wall! Deport everybody! And can we get some gold leaf on the Statue of Liberty over here? Show a little class, America.
By the convention they'll be singing Donald's praises like there was never any doubt in their minds. By October, Bill Kristol will have stapled a Trump campaign hat directly to his cranium.