Can it be?
I wasn’t impressed by Paul Ryan’s statement that he wasn’t “ready” to support Trump. In the very construction is the implication that the support is coming, just not yet. Republicans always unify around this year’s idiot, so Ryan’s statement struck me as a perfunctory nod in the direction of Redstate commenters in order to keep his conservative street cred. Then I read this:
Paul Ryan isn’t just refusing to endorse Trump; he’s not just giving permission for his entire House Republican caucus to not endorse Trump; he’s actually putting pressure on his colleagues to keep their distance if they want to protect their conservative credentials.
What? If it is true, and the movement conservatives REALLY are going to hold out, then whoa nelly!! Let’s roll up everything, the White House, Senate, House, and the Supreme Court for 100 years.
Jason, they are weak and submissive little puppies. They will all roll over and talk about how great Trump is within a month. I give Ted Cruz 3 weeks before he makes his endorsement. There needs to be the illusion of a fight so it makes the make-up that much more “impressive”
I’m not sure they’re going to have a choice. The GOP as a coherent political party ceased to exist somewhere during the late Bush years. McCain and Romney were recognizable presidential candidates somewhere near the mainstream of American politics, and willing to play by the regular rules, but that only disguised the fact that there was no party behind them any more.
What the GOP literally is right now is the structural shell of a political party holding two exceptionally valuable properties: major party tax breaks/perks/fundraising and major party ballot access.
The Tea Party did not quite manage to take over the GOP but probably killed it; the smaller libertarian insurgence finished off any chance for recovery.
Trump was the first to realize that it was ripe for a corporate raider because even though the lights were on there was nobody home in the building. So he acquire it, and it is telling that the strongest defense they had was to try a belated embrace of the Tea Partier Ted Cruz–kind of like being the Roman Empire when you have to hire the Goths to help fight off the Huns.
The reason that Paul Ryan and company will come around is that the two-party duopoly has made it nearly impossible to start a third party, and Trump now owns their property. Eventually they either submit or effectively get out of politics.
Paul Ryan to Donald Trump: This is my party.
Ryan is negotiating for something. Once he gets it, they’ll fall in line. But Ryan has been working at trying to separate the House from the Presidential circus. Not sure how successful that is, but he is trying to get people to see them as separate to try to preserve seats in November.
Cassandra, Thanks for that link. So Ryan has these ludicrous demands:
Run the campaign that Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have run:
a. be an orthodox conservative tax-cutter and spending-cutter,
b. while trying to win over enough Hispanic voters to actually get to the White House.
Ryan may be seeking to go into the 2020 Presidential campaign with his hands clean of the Trump disaster. If the #neverTrump people are serious they will put up a third party spoiler. Maybe Romney or Bloomberg will take one for the team.
My suspicion is that ultimately, Republicans will fall in line with those that don’t remaining quietly on the sidelines. I do hope I’m wrong…I’ve not seen an electoral map that was mostly one color in my lifetime. Polling is starting now for the general election; obviously way too early to tell what’s going on, but Gravitas has Clinton plus 12 right now.
Not attending the GOP Convention:
George HW Bush
BushCo
Jeb!
Romney
McCain
Just saw news that Lindsay Graham says he won’t vote for Trump.
The falling in line might be a little shaky.
People like Cruz and Ryan are now playing for 2020, and even Rubio is making noises about going back on his word and running for re-election to the Senate. They can see the clock-cleaning to come and they don’t want any of that leaving stains for the real prize.
Remember, Republicans MUST win in 2020 so they can control the next census gerrymander. If they don’t, they disappear as a national party.
Erick Erickson isn’t feelin’ it:
There are rumors that Trump paid Sarah Palin for her endorsement. We know he paid the people who cheered him at his campaign announcement. I’m sure Erick son of Erick will come around once his bottom line gets fattened.
I would normally agree with that sentiment, but Erickson is really an uber conservative type who demands absolute purity from everyone. Trump is at best a liberal and perhaps even a progressive. I just don’t think Erickson is going to be able to stomach a GOP candidate that has start to talk about the minimum wage, and national health care, etc. I think this will gnaw at him to no end and maybe even make his head explode.
On the other hand, many of them will come around when they realize that the Democrats will probably be in a position to select 2, 3 and maybe even 4 SCOTUS and cement their gains for, well probably for all time.
@Dave: Trump is “even progressive”? Maybe to Erick Squared.
He faces the same choice as all Republicans who are making a buck off politics (I sometimes think that’s all of them, given what a bunko operation their entire party is at root) — throw in with Trump for the short-term benefits, or hope the “true conservative” party that rises from the ashes will be as lucrative as it’s been up until now.
The problem for the “true conservatives” is that Trump has revealed that half of their support isn’t actually support for those policies. You can’t win elections with a quarter of the vote, so the GOP will become a Southern regional party.
@a “…throw in with Trump for the short-term benefits, or hope the “true conservative” party that rises from the ashes…”
This cannot work, and they know it. As soon as Trump wins, there will be a steady stream of pro-Trump GOP quislings taking up hard-to-dislodge positions of power.
Their only real hope is to take a loss now, and regroup.
This: Their only real hope is to take a loss now, and regroup.
Since the loss of establishment candidates (Jeb!, Rubio) the GOP has been trying to find the least damaging way to lose. They were hoping to boot Trump at the convention – run a Kasich, have him lose, but avoid looking crazy. That plan bit the dust with Trump’s big wins.
Yes, and so they redig the trenches further to the rear after another defeat. Think McClellan during the Seven Days.
Also, I think you’re talking about real jobs. I was referring to the 101st Keyboard Squadron.
On rereading your comment, another thing: You reference “the GOP” as if it were a coordinated organization. This is demonstrably not the case. Even in its House majority, the Freedom Caucus operates independently of the Old Guard, and housekeeping bills are now passed, when they’re passed, with a mix of Old Guard Republicans and neo-lib Democrats. Too few Democrats understand that such a centrist coalition will kill any hope of progressive change because it will “add to the deficit.”
As I think professor Newtown has pointed out, the GOP label now represents a loose confederation of organizations that operates to give ballot access to conservatives. Most have been revealed as a bunch of people Reagan turned loose in the ’80s. And I’m not talking about Birchers, I’m talking about the formerly institutionalized mentally disturbed.
The establishment Dems will probably embrace the disenfranchised Republicans moving the Democratic Party further to the right to get more of that corporate money