The most ridiculous thing about the Donald Trump story is not anything he has said or done.
The most ridiculous thing about the Donald Trump story is that it is only now, more than eight months after he formally announced his candidacy, that the Republican Party is actually taking a serious stand against him.
Over the weekend, conservatives and liberals took aim at Trump with a hashtag called #NeverTrump. They listed reasons why Trump should not be president, calling him “empty rhetoric” and everything wrong with America. Marco Rubio joined in the fray, calling Trump a “con artist” who “cannot be our nominee.”
It is certainly true that a Trump presidency would be catastrophic for this country. But where was this rhetoric before? Why did it take the Republican Party this long to actually attack Trump like this?
The answer to that is that the Republican Party understands that it needs the sort of people which Trump attracts, because that is the Republican Party at its very core.
Yes, conservative media figures like George Will and Rush Limbaugh have made their opposition to Trump very clear. But this has come after they allowed the Tea Party to run amok and spout dog-whistle, racist rhetoric. Look at all the cries of Obama being a Muslim and the idiotic Birther conspiracy.
Trump may not be a traditional small-government, cut taxes sort of Republican. But nationalism and populism are far more effective tools to motivate voters than any low-tax rhetoric will ever be, and that is Trump’s great secret.
The great conservative William F. Buckley’s finest moment came when he looked at Ayn Rand’s Objectivists and the John Birch Society, and clearly refuted them and told them to get out of the conservative movement. By doing that, Buckley made conservatism respectable, intellectual, and helped lead them to the Reagan years.
Buckley had the moral courage to do that with the Birchers. But Buckley is gone, and the current Republican Party has barely done anything to actually stop Donald Trump. Because while Marco Rubio is reading a bunch of tweets, Chris Christie, Maine Governor Paul LePage, and other GOP politicians are starting to get in line behind Trump instead of fighting him.
And there is so much more that they could do. The Huffington Post has reported that the Republican Party barely gave any effort into digging into Trump’s past and doing any real opposition research like they do with practically any other candidate
In short, the entire Republican effort against Trump reeks of a college student who puts off studying for his exams until the night before, and then panics when he realizes how much work he has to do in so little time. The Republican Party should have refuted Trump from the very beginning just like they did with David Duke in 1991, or Buckley with the Birchers.
But they lacked the moral courage to do so. And now, in their most desperate hour, all they can do is tweet and hope for a miracle that will stop trump. It is not going to happen.
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