The word establishment above is enclosed in quotes, because like “narwhals” I don’t know if the “DEGOP establishment” is a real thing. In the past I’ve used, “Charlie Copeland, Dave Burris, and Ken Simpler” to personify the term establishment, but who knows? Rather than a rhetorical device, I may have accidentally hit the bulls-eye and actually named the DEGOP establishment’s last remaining members? That would be weird.
But, questions of cryptozoology aside, supposing “the DEGOP establishment” is a real thing, and that there are more than three remaining members, I can’t help wondering how they will react when Donald Trump becomes their party’s presidential candidate. My sense is that they will meekly fall in line and discover that Trump is actually pretty good. It will take some rationalizing, and McGyver like defusing of some cognitive dissonance, but Republicans are well practiced at living with the nonsensical as if it was sensical. How else can they still be in favor of tax cuts as an economic policy, right?
Anyway, it seems David Brooks has also been wondering what is going happen to the last remaining sober, reasonable Republicans. First he outlines the problem:
Very few presidents are so terrible that they genuinely endanger their own nation, but Trump and Cruz would go there and beyond. Trump is a solipsistic branding genius whose “policies” have no contact with Planet Earth and who would be incapable of organizing a coalition, domestic or foreign.
Cruz would be as universally off-putting as he has been in all his workplaces. He’s always been good at tearing things down but incompetent when it comes to putting things together.
Then he comes up with a long-shot solution:
There’s a silent majority of hopeful, practical, programmatic Republicans […] Please don’t go quietly and pathetically into the night.
Will they put up a fight, or will they go quietly into the night? I know what side I’ll be betting on.