GOP Donor Class Maneuvering Against Donald Trump / Jeff Sessions (R-Al) Endorses Trump

Donald Trump still has a steep uphill climb, however one views him (favorably or not). What makes this entire contest so interesting is how he has rising to frontrunner status in spite of his being hated and feared by the Establishment — which includes the GOP corporate donor class, mainstream media, mainstream academia, and all the other voices of “respectability” in U.S. society — and demonized in mainstream media.

Even if you despise Trump, you have to be wondering, What are all these rich and well-connected folks afraid of?

The GOP corporate donor class has begun maneuvering against him. They have hired a consulting firm to explore the prospects for running their own independent candidate in all 50 states. This sort of thing will almost certainly continue, especially if he wins enough delegates to clinch the nomination. I have no idea who their candidate might be. With a suitable label, it could be Rubio. It could be Michael Bloomberg. It could be someone we haven't seen yet. The donors' aim won’t necessarily be to win. No independent candidate has even come close to winning the presidency in well over 100 years, after all. Their motive will be to draw enough votes away from Trump to prevent him from winning — even if the effort leads Hillary Clinton to win in a landslide. As we have already seen, the elites won’t be bothered by this because from their globalist standpoint, with one of their own at the helm, business as usual can continue, and doubtless will … for a time. (You didn’t really think the GOP corporate donor class was conservative in any traditional sense of subordinating its love for, e.g., money, to transcendent values, did you?)

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/doors-gop-consulting-independent-219859

This story runs along similar lines, and although I’m not 100% confident of its source, I tend to trust fellow outsider author Roger Stone (author of The Clintons’ War Against Womenv (2015), Jeb! and the Bush Crime Family (2016), and other exposures), as he's a political operative, a veteran of multiple campaigns who's been around the block a few times. The claim here is that Marco Rubio will work closely behind the scenes with the Koch Brothers to destroy Trump’s campaign. Sounds quixotic to me. Assuming the allegation has substance, they have two weeks. If Trump defeats Rubio in his home state of Florida, a distinct possibility at this point, Rubio might as well throw in the towel unless he is tapped by those corporate donors later. And were back to scenario #1.

http://conservativebase.com/ambushing-the-donald-koch-bros-and-gop-swells-plot-to-sabotage-trump-campaign/

More low-key angst from inside-the-Beltway “conservative” George Will:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-to-cool-down-donald-trump/2016/02/26/14571f9e-dbeb-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html

Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is also speaking out against Trump, while claiming that as something of an outsider himself, he understands the reasons for the support.

Sanford’s words: “Hayek warned about what we are seeing right now in his book, The Road to Serfdom. Its premise was that, over time, free governments became so dysfunctional that the masses were open to the words of a “strongman” who would return order. The catch in this Faustian bargain was that freedom would be lost in the process. One hundred years earlier, Edward Gibbon wrote of the same as he recounted how the Athenians gave up freedom in exchange for security — and lost both.

“Maybe I am wrong on all this, and Trump is simply a disruptive force in politics that will generate change much like new technology does … but maybe not. History would suggest we are playing with fire and need to step away from the entertainment found in the Republican primaries and think about what’s really at play. It’s worth a thought.”

That’s the whole point of this blog. What’s really at play here? What I see are the opening gambits of a possible class war — possibly conceivable as retaliatory. After all, Warren Buffet recently noted, “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

http://dailycaller.com/2016/02/26/why-stopping-trump-is-of-utmost-importance/

Did the point-one-percent really believe the system of political economy they’ve spent most of the past century putting into place, layer by layer by layer, would have no adverse consequences? Some of these consequences will appear in the form of rebellion, especially now that all of us have the uncontrolled Internet, and can share information at a level never before seen, anywhere on Planet Earth; other consequences will appear in the form of economic and other forms of dysfunction, to be expected in an economic system increasingly based on mass consumption and on debt to sustain it.

On the other hand, Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has just endorsed Trump. Although I’ve heard some possibilities, his is the obvious name to begin floating as a Trump running mate. He’d be a definite plus, as he’s experienced, and is one of the few in Congress who have consistently opposed corporatist “free trade” agreements. In particular, he is one of the folks who took the time to peruse the text of the highly secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), when it was locked in a vault behind doors with guards who would not allow any phones or anything else that could be used to film, photograph or otherwise copy documents. Once he had a look at the TPP, he denounced it as almost certainly a job killer and a national sovereignty killer (my words, not his).

No GOP candidate besides Trump has mentioned this or any of the other globalist “free trade” agreements waiting in the wings (e.g., the Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership, the TPP’s Atlantic equivalent). It’s useful to remember that like immigration, this matter, possibly crucial for the economic future of the U.S., would be invisible had Trump not showed up.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/02/28/game-change-jeff-sessions-endorses-trump-from-stage-in-alabama-stunning-event-unites-populistnationalist-movement/

Ron Paul repudiates Donald Trump

Saturday, and here we are. I'd planned not to post, but I want my information to be current if possible. In my piece I noted that Donald Trump is no Ron Paul. Below we'll pay the good doctor a visit. A few preliminary remarks:

One of the goals of this project is to work out some ideas about what’s really going on. Why Donald Trump, and why now? Is he what his detractors say: a demagogue, a buffoon, a charlatan, a con man? Or does he reflect a massive rejection by voters, many of them reasonably intelligent, of Establishment business-as-usual, top-down, from-the-center-outward crony politics? Would he destroy the credibility of the Republican Party, and of conservatism? Or is he a sign that it has already destroyed its own credibility among its grassroots, and that for those of us who know the difference between a conservative and a neoconservative, or between a conservative and a globalist, real conservatives have had no actual voice in the corridors of power possibly since the first Bush presidency?

Is Trump reflective of all the residual racism, sexism, etc., etc.? Or is he a sign of significant pushback on the part of those who not only see globalism and “free trade” agreements as having worked against their best interests, but are fed up with how political correctness has pushed the culture leftward for a quarter of a century now? A recent study does show, after all, that working class white males are the one group whose fortunes are declining, as their members suffer from a surprising excess of treatable illnesses (brought on by stress?), substance abuse (especially alcohol), and suicide.

This group has been maligned for decades as uneducated and backward. Now, of course, they have the Internet same as everyone else, can gain the same perspective as everyone else, and it has become clear that the declarations that they are now at a systemic disadvantage are rooted not in paranoia but in solid first-hand experience.

Did the elites and academic-lefty types, or media-lefty types, really believe they could continue their campaigns of dominance and demonization forever, without eventually inviting pushback? Until now, of course, the pushback has been limited to talk radio, Internet alternative news sites and blogs, Tea Party groups who met in the back rooms of the local Denny’s with the Libertarians, none of which had any chance of changing anything. The Establishment remained firmly in control, using PC types because they were good at distracting and dividing. There is no reason to believe those in the Establishment have any interest in whether black lives matter, or whether homosexuals ought to have the right to marry, or even whether women ought to have a right to have abortions. But these issues are good at focusing the attention of gullible sectors of the public away from the real campaigns of domination, waged from within Wall Street via corporations such as Goldman Sachs, from within the Federal Reserve, from within Monsanto, from within Halliburton, and so on.

The challenge to Hillary from the Sanders movement suggests that anti-elitism is hardly limited to the Republican grassroots, moreover. It is widespread, “bipartisan,” and probably still growing. It may develop into an effective repudiation of the familiar “two-party” system where both parties are furthering essentially the same agendas.

Anti-elitism has become a force to be reckoned with, and for conservatives, the current voice of that force is Donald Trump — who may be a billionaire from New York City but doesn’t talk like one. Whatever one says, he’s not a globalist but an America-Firster. He’s not going to treat the Megyn Kellys of elite media like fragile flowers, and he’s not going to pander to Black Lives Matter and other PC-era pressure groups. Is he for real? I don’t know. What I am reasonably sure of is that he wouldn’t be at the center of attention did he not have the people’s attention (and if he had not greatly increased ratings even for elite media). The thought behind this attention isn’t going anywhere. It will still be around even if at the end Trump is denied the GOP nomination. I don’t know if he can beat Hillary or not. It’s far too soon to be making such predictions. I am sure that if the GOP wing of the Establishment denies him the nomination in favor of, say, Rubio, those who supported him with either vote “third party” or stay home on Election Day. Hillary will then win in a landslide, it will be back to business-as-usual for the elites, and both the real economy and the culture will continue to worsen. How long, under those circumstances, working class white males will continue to put up with an economy that offers them only precarity or underemployment and a culture that demonizes them is something else I do not want to predict, at least not right now.

Ron Paul has refused to endorse Donald Trump. That’s worth noting. Disclosure: I supported Dr. Paul in both 2008 and 2012. He failed to catch on with those outside the libertarian-leaning, intellectual wing of the GOP. My sense is that he and his movement were too intellectual for the average public-schooled voter; this distinguishes them from Trump who speaks the language of the common people. At the moment I know longer know if this is good, or bad.

Only a few paragraphs of this article discuss Dr. Paul on Trump. The final nine are about other candidates (although in fairness, one is about his son Rand who also failed to catch on). Typical.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/24/ron-paul-i-wouldnt-support-trump-as-gop-nominee.html

I had to seek for Ron Paul’s own remarks, unedited, and found them on one of his own sites:

http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/trump-wants-to-become-the-government

As Dr. Paul is not part of the Establishment, his thoughts merit consideration. His complaint is that Trump has channeled the anger of those we’ve identified but “offers no solutions whatever,” and “in some respects he’s worse than the Establishment” especially when it comes to foreign policy. And: “He has nothing new when it comes to serious ideas.”

What, presently, is the alternative, however? If you’re supporting him, that’s what you’re probably thinking. Part of what I am thinking is that Libertarianism has several variants (including Anarcho-Capitalism) which are now withering on the vine, confined to think tanks and blogs but otherwise unable to affect the national conversation. Trump has definitely affected the national conversation. Would mass immigration (which is presently destroying Europe) and the effects of “free trade” agreements (which are partly responsible for destroying a large portion of the U.S. manufacturing base) even be on the radar were it not for The Donald?

One reason Trump is winning with the masses is their perception, even if not shared by the pundit class and those who identify with that, that he is honest and straightforward, even about how he’s worked the system in the past:

“[Trump] brazenly declared that he gave money to lots of politicians because he was a businessman.

“"I give to everybody. When they call, I give."

“And why did he do so?

“"When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me."

“For many viewers, that may have been the most honest and authentic line they'd ever heard in a political debate. Think about the contrast with Hillary Clinton, who seemed shocked that people wonder why an investment banking firm paid her $675,000 for a speech.”

http://www.newsmax.com/scottrasmussen/campaign-finance-reform-washington/2016/02/26/id/716330/

One of my favorite online writers, Charles Hugh Smith, offers this explanation why pundits of whichever stripe fail to understand Donald Trump and his appeal.

Three great paragraphs:

"Trump doesn't fit into any stereotype of recent campaigns, and so the perplexed pundits have attempted to label him a demagogue or Id-fueled populist without a "real" agenda--that is, a candidate that should have burned out in the first week ot two of the campaign.

"They don't get it, and the reason why they don't get it is because they are rooted in the petit bourgeois technocrat class that aspires to insider status within corrupt cliques of centralized power. The pundit burnishes their credentials with the usual petit bourgeois baubles -- advanced degrees from "respected" universities, books published by "respected" New York publishing houses, and fellowships from "respected" poverty-pimp foundations funded by guilt-ridden plunderers and their dilettante offspring.

"The media punditry's relationship with the working class is akin to their relationship with China: they visited Shanghai once and stayed in a luxe hotel and were entertained by bigshots in the glitzy bars and cafes. Satisfied with their shiny new profound knowledge of China, they return home filled with insights into a nation they've never actually visited -- what they visited was the Hollywood tour version of China, not the actual nation."

In other words, credentialed though they may be, the pundit class knows little or nothing about the real world of (often struggling) working people.

Read the whole piece here.

See you (Lord permitting) on Monday.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

Trump took a beating in last night’s debate, but that’s to be expected at this point. Rubio charged that Trump had hired foreign workers in Florida; he shot back that he was the only one on stage who had ever hired anyone, i.e., created jobs. Not exactly responsive to the allegation, but telling nonetheless. My guess is, it won’t matter.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/donald-trump-had-a-rough-night-will-it-matter-062332029.html

Blog owner’s introduction to what follows: as noted in passing yesterday, The Daily Donald is not simply a vehicle for my ideas and musings. It is a chronicle of our present moment on which you will find a plurality of opinions — some at the other end of links and some as stand-alone articles.

In that light I present this piece (it’s two pieces, actually) by one of my South Carolina friends and acquaintances, Dean Allen.

Just to note, barring something unexpected or truly dramatic, we will not be posting on Saturdays and Sundays. On Monday, we will hear from Dr. Ron Paul, who does not support Donald Trump.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

by Dean Allen (written 21 February)

Donald J. Trump opened a man sized can of whoop-ass yesterday in South Carolina! All of everyone's theories of why Trump cannot get the nomination just went out the window.

Now the talking heads on TV, the spin doctors for the losing candidates, and all the career politicians endorsing losers, are busy concocting theories to put a good face on their losing campaigns. This Sunday morning, they fill the airwaves with long shot theories as to how, if several consecutive miracles were to happen, they would have a "way forward."

We have a saying here in the old South; we call such nonsense whistling past the graveyard. The theories all start off, if all the other losers were to just drop out [unlikely] and if all their votes went to challenger X [even more unlikely], then challenger X would have more votes than Donald Trump.

I have been involved in politics for fifty years. I have managed SUCCESSFUL campaigns, I have WON three elections when it was my name on the ballot. I am a graduate of a half dozen campaign management schools, including several by the Leadership Institute in Washington, DC, and one by the RNC that was taught by the legendary Evelyn McPhail. Evelyn was a long serving member of the Republican National Committee from Mississippi who was as conservative as her good friend Ronald Reagan, and who was also passionate about training our candidates in the "nuts & bolts" of how political campaigns are won. She literally wrote the book on the subject.

In my expert opinion, all the whistling past the graveyard in the world simply will not get any other Republican candidate to 1,237 committed delegates before Donald Trump gets to that magic number.

Here is a big dose of reality for all those "what if" theories from losers. First of all, whether looking at undecided voters before an election, or the supporters of a candidate who just dropped out of a multi-candidate field, slightly more than half of them ALWAYS break for the front runner. That is simply a political fact of life. About 15% of the supporters of a losing candidate were really committed to that losing candidate. Those fanatical supporters of the defeated candidate do not go to your candidate in the next 50 primaries. They sit home and pout.

There is a simple fact, if you are going to win the nomination, you MUST beat Donald Trump, and you must do it before March 15th. After March 15th there are no RNC rules against winner-take-all delegate allocations. Trump has only to continue to get pluralities in order to scoop up all the delegates in every primary after March 15th.

No Republican candidate who has won primaries in BOTH New Hampshire, and South Carolina, has ever gone on to lose the Republican nomination for president. It is all but certain Donald Trump became our nominee last night. It is now time to quit whistling past the graveyard, and start unifying the Grand Old Party around our 2016 standard bearer, Donald Trump.

(Also from Dean Allen)

I have written extensively about Mr. Trump's executive experience, stance on critical issues, and why I believe he will be a great president and will help us make America great again.

I have one other reason for supporting Donald J. Trump. I correctly predicted that both John McCain, and Mitt Romney would lose the general elections in which they ran. I supported both men once they became our nominees, but I also knew they would lose.

I understand what it takes for any Republican to win a general election. In fact, I just finished writing a book on that subject that was published in January of this year. In my book, SUICIDE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, I point out why moderate nominees lose elections, and how Republicans can win again.

Ronald Reagan said we win when we "Raise a bold standard, with no pale pastels." He knew what he was talking about. Reagan won landslides twice. I was proud to run his GOTV operation in Galveston County, Texas in both 1980 and 1984. We did not just carry Texas, we carried Galveston County, an organized labor stronghold.

Reagan understood two things about presidential elections that are necessary to win. First of all, you must lay out that bold vision that will fire up our base and turn them out on Election Day. In 2016, nobody is doing any better job of that than Donald J. Trump. His rallies are huge and they draw a cross section of America. Trump supporters are dedicated, even to the point of being fanatical about supporting Mr. Trump.

Ronald Reagan knew one other thing was vitally necessary for Republicans to win a presidential election. Reagan ran a "50 state" campaign for the presidency. Reagan was the last Republican to make a serious effort in each of the 50 states. Why is this important?

Other Republicans over the last 30 years have written off states like New York, California, and Illinois, as too liberal to even contest. This strategy is a serious mistake. When we give all those electoral votes to the Democrat nominee, it becomes almost impossible for any Republican to get to 270 electoral votes. It also means the Democrats do not have to defend those states. They do not have to buy TV commercials in incredibly expensive markets like New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. That frees up millions of dollars the Democrat Party can pour into so called swing states. Places like Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia, just to mention a few.

One reason we have written off New York and California is because running competitive campaigns there is incredibly expensive. Donald Trump has enough money to run competitive campaigns in all 50 states, forcing the Democrats to defend every "blue" state with scarce financial resources.

Donald Trump can, and will, carry the state of New York. Upstate New York is conservative. New York City has been the problem for past Republicans. Trump will be different because he has built much of New York City, loves the city, and has employed tens of thousands of New Yorkers in his many businesses there. Donald J. Trump WILL carry the state of New York. That is the proverbial game changer.

Republicans have written off California in the past. This was done in spite of the fact Californians have passed numerous state wide ballot initiatives that are very conservative. Californians have voted against homosexual marriage, against extending welfare benefits to illegal aliens, and against raising property taxes. The fact is, when given the opportunity, a majority of the voters in California still support the ideals in the GOP platform.

When our presidential nominee "writes-off" a state there is another disadvantage. It depresses Republican voter turnout in those states. Why is that critically important? Without turning out the GOP base in those states, it gets much harder to elect, or re-elect, Republicans to the US House and Senate, as well as all the down-the-ballot races. McCain and Romney did not just lose the White House, they took down a lot of other great Republican candidates running for local and state wide offices all across America. President Trump is going to have long coat-tails, even in places like New York, and California.

Every one of the sixteen Republicans who ran for president this year would be a better president that the eventual nominee of the Democrat Party.

Only Donald J. Trump has the ability to win a general election. Unless we win, the best platform in history is meaningless. Trump has said "America does not win any more." He also said "When I am president, America will win again." You have the opportunity this coming Saturday to start America winning again. You and I can re-ignite the Reagan Revolution starting right here in the Palmetto State. Join Team Trump and make the win in South Carolina even GREATER.

______________________________________________

DEAN ALLEN is a Vietnam Veteran; he has been active in the leadership of civic, fraternal, and Veterans organizations for four decades; and he is the author of several books on business, history, and politics. His most recent book, just published, is SUICIDE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY (Renaissance Revolution Press, 2016). DEAN ALLEN is a candidate for Republican National Committeeman in South Carolina.

Vote Dean Allen

votedeanallen.com

Lord permitting, we'll be back Monday! Oh, and a friend and I will be improving this blog's appearance soon! -SY

Inaugural Post - Welcome to The Daily Donald!!

Welcome to this blog. As the title suggests, its focus is the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, real estate magnate and former reality TV star (The Apprentice) to Republican Party frontrunner status.

Other things being equal, now that he’s won major primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada, and has walked away with a commanding lead in the delegate count, the chances of his coasting to the GOP nomination at the party’s July Convention have just increased substantially.

Some say Trump will destroy whatever is left of the conservative movement; his supporters see him as the country’s last hope.

The “establishment” (corporate donors, Inside-the-Beltway pundits, etc.) is gnashing its collective teeth, although having alienated the Party’s base over a several year period, there is no reason other than sheer indifference and arrogance, that they shouldn’t have seen this coming.

My purpose here is to get the essentials of events in one place on a daily basis, which will mean a daily post, with links to the relevant information you can follow and explore more. It is not to support Donald Trump’s effort to win the presidency, even if I think the “Trump phenomenon” is the most interesting political event to occur in years!

It is also not to attack Trump or his supporters. Whatever one feels about the relative absence of cognitive content in phrases like “Make America Great Again” (which reminds me of Obama’s peon to “Change you can believe in!”), I sincerely decry the dismissal of his supporters as racists, poorly educated, losers in the so-called new economy, etc.

We are trying to find some middle ground here! It’s not being done elsewhere on the Internet that I know of!

Other blogs and commentary websites are either avidly pro-Trump, no questions asked, or hysterically anti-Trump, no questions asked (just check out Salon.com).

My position: he’s not the Second Coming; nor is he Satan wearing a face that’s too white and too male for our politically correct times (and tendencies many of us, not just Trump’s followers, are sick of)!

You can read more of my personal thoughts here. Although this blog is about Trump and the responses to him, not about me, it is obviously going to be colored by my premises and preoccupations. We’ll get to more of those in due course. My primary purpose here is to provide a daily digest, highlighting the reasons behind and progress of “Trumpism” with relevant commentary.

How long will this continue? Two possibilities. If Trump doesn’t get the nomination, whatever interest this blog has generated may fade. But if (as many suspect) we are seeing a revolution of sorts against elite control of the U.S. political economy to the detriment of ordinary people, this movement will survive whatever happens to The Donald! I think we can count on that!

So here we go!

Our first link exemplifies what many in the donor class are doubtless already thinking: they’ll support Hillary Clinton if Trump is the GOP nominee. If you’re a Trump supporter reading this, some of these pieces will make you retch, but I’d urge you to consider them anyway as exemplars of what you’ll be facing even before (and even more if) Trump wins the GOP nomination.

http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/24/ill-take-hillary-clinton-over-donald-trump

Now comes the first real test. How many of you reading this absolutely despise Rush Limbaugh? Yes, he’s got a mountain-sized ego, but readers, please, I need you to get past that for now. This is an excellent overview of why so much of middle America is turning to Donald Trump. It is not merely ideological. What is confusing people is that Trump is not a systematic thinker. He’s an empiricist. That means he goes off experience and what he sees happening at the moment.

Middle America may be fed up with leftism, Obama-style, but it is also fed up with brands of “conservatism” and free-marketism that are just covers for globalism: the economic erasure of all national borders, placing them in competition with Chinese slave laborers working for pennies on the dollar, and with illegal aliens. Obviously, middle-Americans cannot win in this kind of competition, and have lost ground rapidly over the past couple of decades (NAFTA did not actually begin this but eventually put it in high gear; and now these same apologists for corporatism want a Trans-Pacific Partnership!).

Part of the problem is that few pundits can even tell you what conservatism actually means anymore. Ask a self-identified conservative what he/she wants to conserve, and you get a blank stare of noncomprehension. Many who identify with the term appear to think it means corporations can do as they please and call it “the free market at work.” Anyway, do read this excellent commentary.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/01/20/understanding_trump_s_appeal

A lot of disinformation is being peddled over Trump’s alleged “racism”; and I admit, I never thought his negative remarks about Mexicans earlier in his campaign were a great idea (or about making Mexico pay to build a wall).

Be that as it may, let’s take Hispanic voters seriously. Let’s realize that the majority of them, as U.S. citizens, want the country’s immigration laws enforced no less than Americans of British or other descent.

This may be why Trump won the Hispanic vote in Nevada over Cruz and Rubio.

This pundit correctly notes that Nevada voters might not be representative of the Hispanic population as a whole: a statistically correct rationalization. The test of its soundness will be to see what happens when we get to Florida and Colorado. I’ve a strong sense that all this BS about Trump’s anti-Hispanic “racism” will be seen to be just that: BS.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/25/yes-donald-trump-won-latinos-over-marco-rubio-and-ted-cruz-here-s-why.html

This is the voice of the “establishment”:

“… the menace he represents … a bullying demagogue … the bigotry and ugliness of Trump’s campaign … no credible agenda and no experience … denigrated women, Jews, Muslims, people with disabilities … wild falsehoods … doubles down when his lies are exposed … Is the Republican Party truly not going to resist its own debasement?”

Thinking observers want to know: how much of this is accurate, and how much of it is weaponized language: words and phrases long ago turned into the verbal equivalent of clubs for beating people into submission?

How much of it is evidence of how scared the “establishment” really is of losing power in the face of a Trump victory, not just in July but in November? (I am not yet taking bets on whether Trump’s numbers six months from now will enable him to defeat Hillary Clinton the presumed Democratic nominee in November, especially with the “establishment” most likely backing her if he’s the GOP nominee.)

Links at bottom of article offer the beginnings of a Who’s Who of “establishment” punditry. George Will in particular has been attacking Trump for months, seeing him as dealing a fatal blow to the GOP as a credible repository of conservatism (see above, or my article, on why it is questionable that the GOP has been a repository of conservatism for some time).

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/gop-leaders-you-must-do-everything-in-your-power-to-stop-trump/2016/02/24/d993b548-db0e-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html

More of the shifting winds of “establishment” response to Trump. At least some might be adjusting their comfort zones, even if others will jump ship and back Hillary. Useful to note: Reagan was once a Hollywood actor, a celebrity, about whom many pundits said things like, “Heaven help us if he becomes president.” He served for eight years, made some mistakes (ironically, one of them was signing off on an open-borders type immigration package), but the country survived.

If the U.S. falls, it will not be because of Donald Trump.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-gop-establishment-trump-20160224-story.html

Other things being equal, Donald Trump could amass a sufficient number of delegates by March 15 that it will be extremely difficult for any other candidate to overtake him. That includes Rubio, especially should Trump defeat Rubio in Rubio’s home state:

http://www.vox.com/2016/2/24/11104782/republican-donald-trump-polls-delegates?hl=1&noRedirect=1

Yet another debate tonight in Houston. More theater, without a doubt, as Cruz and Rubio go after each other, each one hoping to emerge as the “establishment” candidate opposing Donald Trump. Ben Domenech recommends they attack Trump personally, under the presumption that doing so would give The Donald a dose of his own medicine. Doesn’t he realize that Trump would prove to be several magnitudes better at this game than they are and eat them alive? http://thefederalist.com/2016/02/25/at-tonights-debate-take-a-flamethrower-to-trump/

We’d be remiss, finally, if we didn’t note Noam Chomsky’s brief comments on what has given rise to the “Trump phenomenon.” In response to a rather leading question about the rise of a “climate of fear,” Chomsky responds: Fear, along with the breakdown of society during the neoliberal period. People feel isolated, helpless, victim of powerful forces that they do not understand and cannot influence.” I think some of us understand these forces, at least somewhat. Whether any of us can influence them is another matter. That’s the whole point of support for outsiders.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/noam-chomsky-we-owe-rise-trump-fear-and-breakdown-society

Link to general Election 2016 coverage on Facebook (for those on Facebook; thanks to James Hall for the pointer): https://www.facebook.com/2016politics/?hc_location=ufi

Until next time! Have a great evening! Your host, Steven.