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.”
Politics
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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TAKE OUR POLL:
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.
Oh and I voted Trup is headed for a epic loss in the poll.
Co-sign with BD's entire response beginning with DJ's post. Outstanding. Right up there with a few really great posts I read over the weekend.
I have little more to say about Trump and the Repubs..and will do so in a little while.
Just wanted to give a quick weigh-in for now.
Francis J. Beckwith, professor of philosophy at Baylor U. (and 2016–17, Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy at the U. of Colorado) wrote:
What the Trump nomination has revealed is that American conservatism, or whatever is left of it, was a mile wide and an inch deep. What distinguished conservatism from its rivals was its deference to tradition, manners, ordered liberty, natural law, and inherited wisdom, as well as skepticism about popular enthusiasms. Conservatism was grounded in a realist view of human nature and the human good, both of which come from the hand of a divine sovereign. A once great political movement that gave us Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr., and Ronald Reagan — with all their gifts of insight, wit, and statesmanship — is now led by a conspiracy-mongering, demagogic, narcissistic loudmouth, championed by assorted boot-licking sycophants. […]
H/T: NRO
NYTimes Reader:
It was no accident that Reagan, in spite of having been a two-term Governor, was a consummate actor and showman, and sold Americans on the American myth of Manifest Destiny, rugged individualism, and John Winthrop's "Shining City On A Hill" fantasy.
It was also no accident when Reagan began his 1980 Presidential Campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, not far from where, 16 years earlier, 3 young civil rights workers were murdered by the Klan for attempting to register black people to vote. Reagan urged a rebirth of "states' rights".
The cult of Reagan has never died. The rise of Trump is a continuation of what a famous American historian identified as the paranoid tendency among the far right.
Fear of immigrants; fear of the left; hatred of government; contempt for education; distrust of science. NOTHING HERE IS NEW.
Trump correctly identified how he could succeed in the Republican Primary system by capturing the paranoid segment of the Republican electorate.
Not supporting Trump is certainly commendable. But merely avoiding the infection will not kill the virus. […]
BD:
"I don't think anybody in our lifetime has seen a mess big as this in a presidential race."
I most certainly have Never Ever seen (or heard of) any presidential race like this before.
And if the history I've read is correct, not even the Goldwater fiasco of 1964 reached this level of madness and sheer toxicity. (Goldwater carried 6 states: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and his home state of Arizona).
Trump is Poison. And so too is the Republican party….which is why they thought it just dandy to have Trump run loose among them as long as he was attacking Pres. Obama. So yes, he's THEIR guy whether they want him now or NOT. After-all, he deserves them and they surely deserve him.
….about Hillary……
As I expressed last week, Hillary MUST resist any and all urges to think this thing is in the bag. Yes, Trump is helping her…BIG TIME…(and We knew he would) thanks to his big fat mouth. The man can't help himself.
But, for the sake of this nation and every American who truly loves this country Hillary can't afford to assume she's going to win. She must stay On. Point. She must fight like H*ll to win. Not by getting into the gutter with Donald. She must fight on her own terms. Be smart about it. THINK it through…..because this ain't over till it's over….
…in November.
Hey Truth with Repub voters running away like they are and people lie Paul Ryan saying they won't support him, do you think Trump can still win in November?
BD I can honestly say that I believe, come the election in November, Hillary will be our next President. I simply refuse to believe that the majority of American voters would ever be so gullible, so reckless, and so STUPID as to put this nation and the lives of every American…to say nothing of the entire World….at risk by putting that dangerously Unfit, and buffoonish megalomaniac in the White House.
BUT. Hillary must NOT assume anything. She's a woman. A lot of men (not just the Donald) have *issues* when it comes to strong, smart and Confident women in positions of leadership.
Now it has certainly gotten better. A lot of men WILL indeed vote for Hillary…including men who can't stand her. Even they realize that disliking Hillary and her politics is one thing. But she's competent. She's NOT insane.
Trump scares the H*LL outta of a lot people…even Men who will put country First and pull the lever for Hillary to keep Trump away form the most powerful position in the world.
Just heard Paul Ryan say he will be glad to stay home and not be chairman of the Repub convention if Trump asks him not to. This is getting ugly.
‘There’s nobody left’: Evangelicals feel abandoned by GOP after Trump’s ascent"
Excerpt:
“Vote according to your convictions,” {Pastor Gary} Fuller told congregants at Gentle Shepherd Baptist Church who will cast ballots in Nebraska’s presidential primary Tuesday. “What you believe is the right thing to vote for, according to the Scriptures.”
He told congregants that the church can’t and won’t promote one candidate over another. But Fuller has a hard time stomaching Trump as the Republican nominee and plans to vote for Cruz on Tuesday, even though the senator has dropped out of the race.
“In a sense, we feel abandoned by our party,” Fuller said. “There’s nobody left.”
Fuller and other conservatives whose voting decisions are guided by their Christian faith find themselves dismayed and adrift now that Trump has wrested control of the Republican Party. It is a sentiment that reaches from the small, aluminum-sided church with a large white cross on its front that Fuller and his wife built on the Nebraska plains to the highest levels of American religious life. Even progressive Christians — evangelicals and Catholics, among others — who don’t necessarily vote Republican are alarmed that
Trump is attracting many voters who call themselves religious (and conservative). A coalition of nearly 60 Christian leaders — many progressive and some conservative — published an open letter last week asking voters of faith to reject Trump and his “vulgar racial and religious demagoguery,” warning that the nation faces a “moral threat” from the candidate. […] WashPost
H/T: Hotair
Yes indeed. Trump's nomination has revealed (for some)…and CONFIRMED for folks like me….that (1) the Republican party AIN'T the least bit Conservative. And (2) Many..if not most so-called 'evangelicals"….and other holier-than-thou christian conservatives…are actually about as "devout" in their faith as, well…TRUMP.
Chickens are comin home to roost. I'm with #Nevertrump
WSJ Reader:
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Black, Bill O'Reilly, The Tea Party, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, David Duke, Fox News, the NRA and the Republican Congress and Senate have done what the Democratic party could never have done, destroyed the Republican party.
Donald will be the Republican nominee for President and nobody with a brain will vote for The Donald. […]
If Republicans let Trump take over the party they'll never get it back. They have to stop him now or else it's done.