I know there are conservative lurkers skimming through the site. This question is aimed at you.
Now the Republican Party has begun shunning Donald Trump and trying to exclude him from the process on any pretext possible. When it comes down to it, the Republican Party is an independent and private organization, and Trump cannot force them to make him their nominee, no matter how the votes break.
I don't see a safe route out of this mess for the GOP. If they don't squeeze him out of the primaries, at worst, he may win them, and at best, he may damage whatever value the party brand has left with the mainstream middle that chooses presidents. And if they squeeze him out, he will have a justified argument that the party didn't give him a fair shake, and will almost certainly go third party.
It's hard to know if his "According to a scientific survey taken of people whom I permit to speak to me, everybody loves me" schtick is bluster or if he really believes it. But I think his ego and reputation is now in this too deep for him to cut his losses and not play this nonsense out.
There are a few conservatives out there. I'm earnestly interested to know how you interpret this situation. Am I reading this correctly?
Theoretically and historically, the process was designed so that boors like Trump were weeded out of the process just because they were so unattractive to voters. But it isn't working this time. Trump is attractive to a critical mass of Republican voters, and has no appeal outside of that. In a two-person primary contest, he would be losing 75%-25%. But in a 17 candidate field, that 25% is good for first place. And that field isn't going to be winnowed to a two-person contest for a looooooong time. Certainly not until after Super Tuesday, and highly likely not until a while after that.
This situation is of the GOP's own making, and has been 30 years in the works, going all the way back to Lee Atwater. While Bush the Elder Patrician stayed above the fray, Atwater was laying the groundwork of cultivating traditionally Democratic working-class votes by appealing to their most bigoted fears - Blacks are stealing your jobs, vowing to make Willie Horton Michael Dukakis' running mate, etc.
This strategy was continued by Karl Rove and has worked with varying levels of success ever since. Through highly successful media inroads through talk radio and Fox News, with unending streams of lies, distortions and cynical identity politics, Republicans have cultivated a loyal following among the underinformed and uninformed, the disgruntled and disaffected, the very stupidest people in America. And now those people are voting for Donald Trump.
Doesn't it infuriate you? Don't you just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and scream, "What's the matter with you?? This man would make a HORRIBLE president!"
What's their attraction to this man? The same thing that made them attracted to Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan. Only now this Flavor-of-the-Month isn't cycling through after 30 days. He doesn't drop in the polls after a gaffe, he doesn't need Koch money, he is entirely self-funded and has no reason to leave. He doesn't care that there is zero evidence that he can win a general election, and why should he? There wasn't much evidence he could win in the primaries, and look where he is.
You know he can't win against Hillary, and you'd never want him to. You know if he runs as a third party candidate, the Dems win the next election, even if they nominate an actual Socialist - not a name-called Socialist who was never remotely Socialist like Obama, but a REAL LIVE SOCIALIST!!!
How do you solve a problem like The Donald?