Republican voters will never admit us liberals are right but aren't they admitting it when none of their superstars can even beat fiorino carson or trump?
If Paul Ryan Ted Cruz Chris Christy santorum Walker kascich huckabee Perry or bush were ever good wouldn't they be beating 3 non politicians?
Don't bother arguing it Republicans. You guys won't even admit Gw bush sucked. You don't have to. Your telling me all I need to know in your primaries. If he was good jeb would be your front runner.
I'm not certain that your conclusion is a given, but your argument is plausible.
In hindsight, which of the 12 dwarfs would Republicans run now?
I say pence, kasich or Paul Ryan might have beaten hillary.
One things for sure. The GOP is a horrible group of deplorable.
I would likely vote for practically anybody but Trump had they ben pit against Mrs. Clinton, but not one of those people are whom the GOP allowed to win its nomination. Is it too late to "dump Trump" and put the
Thomas Sowell or even
Stuart Stevens in his place?
Perhaps it's not for Donald Trump has engendered apostasy within the GOP begetting amongst Democrats that which no Republican alternative to him could: the Reasonable Republican. Reasonable Republicans are normally red-blooded conservatives who are seen (by Democrats, anyway) as people who have mordantly set aside partisan loyalty to help the country avert a disaster.
But just who are these Reasonable Republicans? They're the people who refer to grass roots Trumpkins as quislings and erudite ones as "
Vichy Republicans" intent upon
bringing about an "epuration sauvage" within the GOP. Where does one find them? Well, they're everywhere in D.C. and New York -- the club, the restaurant, the dinner party, the theatre, the grocery store...they're even at GOP fundraisers, though their checkbooks are not -- and though they speak in dulcet tones, shy and retiring they are not. If one wants a Reasonable Republican columnist, one reads
Ross Douthat,
George Will, or
The Wall Street Journal’s
Bret Stephens. If one wants a Reasonable Republican who worked in politics, one has Marco Rubio's adviser
Max Boot or Reagan political director
Frank Lavin.
The Republican revolt isn't, of course, all Trump's doing. It's percolated, occasionally bubbling into the open, for some time now, at least since the close of the Bush era. In 2007,
Matthew Dowd, who had helped run George W. Bush’s reelection campaign,
fell out with the Dubya. Rebranded as an Independent, Dowd is now an analyst at ABC News.
Nicolle Wallace had no beef with the Bush Administration -- she was its communications chief -- but she attained Reasonable Republican status during the 2008 campaign, when she was so terrified by Sarah Palin’s ignorance that she refused to vote.
She has of late been seen ruing the state of her party on...wait for it....MSNBC.
As a principled conservative, I loathe the high likelihood that Hillary Clinton will — barring a bear attack or some other unforeseen externality — win this election. … However, Trump would be far worse. He’d be more dangerous to our safety and our republic. And since I know his loss is coming, I pray to God that it is total. You should, too.
-- Rick Wilson,
NY Daily News, "Beat him like a drum"
What value, however, derives from Reasonable Republicans' presence? Well, they express penance for the GOP nominating Trump. Trump doesn’t do apologies; Reasonable Republicans do. As the columnist Charles Krauthammer noted, “
The joke was on those who believed that he was not a serious man and therefore would not be taken seriously. They — myself emphatically included — were wrong.” Reasonable Republicans sacrificially offer themselves as a target, a very fine ones for Trumpeteers ape their eponymous leader in retaliating against any and every slight. To wit...Bret Stephens, the
Wall Street Journal columnist, found that out last week. Last August,
Stephens took to Twitter and called Sean Hannity -- an unabashed Trump fan -- Fox’s “dumbest anchor.” Mr. Hannity
countered that Stephens was one of the “arrogant, elitist enablers” who helped the GOP lurch so far from real America that it “created the opening for Trump!!” Mr. Stephens
responded in the WSJ blistering Hannity for propounding a stab-in-the-back theory of the 2016 campaign.
The Reasonable Republican's battle with Trump voters offers a preview of an intra-party war that will stretch well past the election, notwithstanding the outcome. Reasonable Republicans are putting in their chits for the fight that begins the day after Election Day. Why? Because there’s no more fun for a Republican than fighting other Republicans. Because it's not for personal reasons. It's not for advancing themselves or their friends. It’s for principle . For Reasonable Republicans, principle matters more than all else. That's as it should be for us all.
Mod Edit: 320 Years of History Please remember to link to material you source from, link added: https://theringer.com/the-rise-of-the-reasonable-conservative-2433d8a1b18d#.2b174reme