Wednesday, March 16, 2016

You break, you buy

Sorry, Republicans. You destroyed your own party, so don't complain when Donald Trump gets the nomination.

For starts, let's stop pretending that the billionaire real estate developer is some sort of revolutionary. Trump is as Establishment as you can get. Right-wing billionaires are part of the Establishment - by definition. His followers are the same spoiled 1-percenters who peopled the Tea Party. (I'm using the term "peopled" loosely.)

Now, Republican leaders are terrified of what will happen if Trump is their presidential nominee. They know he'll lose in November just as long as voters actually get off their asses and vote. So they're pushing for a brokered convention where delegates can deny Trump the nomination.

Hahaha. No. He's yours, Repubs. Contested conventions date from the days when delegates were chosen by state party officials, not by voters in primaries. And GOP voters - since they don't think like we do - want Trump. Why should the party reject Trump and replace him with someone who got fewer votes? And if they want to replace him with someone who isn't even running, then whoever they want to replace him with should have run. (Paul Ryan says he won't accept it.) Besides that, Trump voters will reduce the party to a broken husk if their guy isn't the nominee after winning the most votes. They'll do to their party what Al Gore's supporters should have done to the Bush thugocracy.

You can make the case that Bernie Sanders should contest the Democratic convention if Hillary Clinton still has more delegates, because Clinton has Republican positions like supporting the Iraq War and video game censorship. Having different policies from the Republicans is a key reason to have a Democratic Party. But Donald Trump is an ideological match for his own party label. He's a Frankenstein of the GOP's making.

Good grief, Rick Scott even endorsed him!