Politics –
NeverTrump Movement Engulfs GOP
Donald J. Trump is now the de facto leader and face of the Republican Party. However, his ascension to the top has not only strengthened the NeverTrump movement, but has prompted lifelong Republicans to flee the party and seek a political savior not named “Donald.”
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Trump became the presumptive 2016 Republican nominee for president after winning the Indiana Republican primary last week. Now, disgruntled Republicans have gone public in record numbers to announce they will NEVER support “The Donald” and are proving it by leaving the GOP in droves to join the NeverTrump movement.
“Reporters keep asking if Indiana changes anything for me. The answer is simple: No,” said U.S. Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska.  He also included a link to a February Facebook post in which he appealed to Trump backers to drop their support.
Mark Salter, a former speech writer for Senator John McCain, said he intends to support former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Trump.
“The GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it’s on the level. Â [Now] I’m with her,” Salter (@MarkSalter55) tweeted, referring to the common rallying cry among Clinton supporters.
“If you’re for Trump you functionally are for a man unfit to be president, and for the degradation of [American] conservatism,” tweeted noted neoconservative William Kristol (@BillKristol) last Wednesday. Kristol then reached out to 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney late Friday night to help enlist a strong third-party candidate, in a last-ditch effort to thwart the real estate magnate’s bid.
“NEVER EVER EVER Trump. Simple as that,” tweeted Tim Miller (@Timodc), former campaign communications director for Jeb Bush, who dropped out of the White House race earlier this year.
Longtime GOP strategist Mary Matalin recently switched her affiliation from the GOP to the Libertarian Party. Even Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan voiced his disapproval of Trump.
When asked if he is ready to support the presumptive Republican nominee, the speaker surprised most everyone with his response.
“I’m just not ready to do that at this point,” Ryan told CNN’s Jake Tapper. Ryan said that although he hopes Trump will be “part of the unifying process” for the deeply fractured GOP, he doesn’t expect it and will withhold his support.
“I’m not there right now,” Ryan added.
If that wasn’t enough, the only 2 living Republicans to sit in the Oval Office — George H.W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, — issued a joint statement saying that not only will they not attend the 2016 RNC convention, but they will also not endorse Trump.
A motley crew of Republican voters also took to Twitter to vow that they were changing their party affiliation, just to avoid having to support Trump. Some even posted photos of their voter registration cards burning to a crisp in their hands.
This can’t be good news for Trump, who seems to have assumed his transition to the general election would be smooth and automatically supported by all the Republicans he trampled along the way. It also can’t be good news for the Republican National Committee, which seems to have a historically divisive nominee on its hands.  However, it is likely welcomed news for Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign, who have just been handed a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic buffoon to run against in the general election.
Politics
For Democrats, a Trump candidacy is a blessing on a silver platter.  According to a recent CNN/ORC poll, Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump in the general election by a 13 point margin of 54% to 41%.  Although those numbers can and will likely fluctuate between now and November, Mrs. Clinton’s lead is still substantial enough to give her campaign a dose of confidence.
Already, the Clinton camp has begun airing ads on social media, merely using Trump’s own words and actions against him. They’ve also collected a cacophony of negative references to Trump from members of his own party, including former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, former challenger Sen. Ted Cruz and others.
To counter the growing seawall of discourse against him, Trump began public musings over who might be his eventual running mate.  One name mentioned was South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who quickly responded by saying “Thanks, but NO THANKS!!”
WATCH 2 NEW HILLARY CLINTON ADS:
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It appears many within the Republican Party are beginning to see Trump’s candidacy for exactly the con it is. As his rivals have so eloquently described him, Trump is a charlatan, a congenital liar and a man completely unfit for public office at any level, particularly the presidency. In the words of conservative George Will: Trump’s “metabolic urge to be scabrous guarantees that Republican candidates everywhere will be badgered by questions about what they think about what he says. What they say will determine how many of them lose with him, and how many deserve to.”
To win the presidency, Donald Trump will need to win all of the states Mitt Romney won in 2012, plus steal a few states that Barack Obama won as well (such as Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida).  He will need to do better than Romney, who lost 73% of the Hispanic vote (currently, 83% of Hispanics view Trump unfavorably).  He will also need to win at least 53% support from married women (he currently has only 44% support among ALL women). For Trump, the odds are tall and seemingly insurmountable.
With Republicans bolting the party, joining the NeverTrump movement (more than 30,000 have signed an online pledge) and throwing their support behind Hillary Clinton, Donald’s dreams of one day sitting in the Oval Office are beginning to appear to be just that — a dream!
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First of all very good article DJ. You covered every point. Now I have to say this is history making. I don't think anybody in our lifetime has seen a mess big as this in a presidential race. Who ever heard of people running from a party after twenty or thirty years and voting for the opposite party because they can't stand the nominee? Then I never heard of a former president refusing to endorse the nominee of his same party. And the Paul Ryan thing is about to explode I can feel it. The history books will mark this as the real death of the Repub party. Not only will Trump go down but he's going to take a whole lot of other Repubs with him. I'm just going to sit back and watch the show.