Why is Donald Trump the GOP candidate for president?
I honestly don't think the GOP had any concept of how to deal with Donald Trump.
Since the latter days of the Reagan administration, in my opinion, the GOP has been hijacked (I'd call it an addiction) ever more to the right-wing evangelical vote.
THAT group, in particular, is particularly self-segregating (politically, if not socially and/or ethnically) and runs with blinders. There's no reasoning with them. They are lit by the fires of righteousness - not unlike many on the deep left-wing, that - so compromise is seen as weakness, not pragmatism.
I don't really get it. Sure, there's a lock-in of a pile of votes if you're anti-abortion, but at what cost? If the religious card could have been leveraged into breaking the lock the Dems have on the black vote through the Black southern Baptists, it might have been worth it. If it could have further been leveraged into a big chunk of the hispanic vote through their strong Catholicism, again, probably worth it.
But if you're not going to fracture those two very natural demographics, then why the HELL would you tie yourself to southern religious conservatives? Even if you ignore them completely, do you really think they'd vote for a Democrat?
The incompetent bunglers in the GOP party admin are too stupid to understand this. They've managed to change the party of business and fiscal responsibility into the "narrow minded racist religious zealotry party" AND AT THE SAME TIME shown themselves to be just as fiscally [i]incompetent[/i] and self-interested as the Democrats. So who are people going to vote for?
The Liberal agenda in the US is ascendant for lots of reasons from cultural to educational/indoctrinational. I'd even say it's philosophical as per Plato's Republic or even Aesop - the grasshoppers are having a wonderful time, the ants look ridiculous for their concerns. Them promoting a complete boob as their candidate for the highest political office displays either their complete lack of faith in the structures of our system (you might consider how monumental that is conceptually to a dogmatic conservative especially), or a troubling level of nihilism. Probably both.
The US needs an opposition party; but that needs to be a CREDIBLE opposition party. The GOP mandarins are far too busy in my opinion protecting their sinecure and personal wealth in Washington to perform that role any longer.
The point being that I think Trump's brand of populism isn't new; from the Gracchi in the Roman Republic to now, bomb-throwing crowd-pleasers have often riled the masses to their own benefit.
Where the GOP failed in this case is to understand the deep-seated and seething resentment in their core party over their failure to do anything in the last 16 years but kowtow to evangelicals, spending every cent of political capital on bullshit social issues that any *reasonable* conservative would consider NONE OF ANYONE'S BUSINESS.
Abortion? Tragic, and sad, but very much an issue between a woman, her doctor, and her conscience. As much as you may want to, one simply cannot legislate how women are going to value that unborn child. Gay marriage? Whether you "approve" of homosexuality is an intensely personal moral issue but in America, the foundation of this country is the premise that nobody has moral primacy over another. Not a hereditary king, nor some suburban megachurch member. In any case, the concept of marriage is one of stability and community - things conservatives used to consider important.
The resulting apathy of the core conservative mainstream means the nutters got to run the show...and thus you get a Donald Trump as a candidate. Frankly, I'm doubtful he's even conservative; his anti-Establishment message simply 'sells' better within a party that is a) out of power, and b) nominally about reducing the power of government anyway.
I honestly don't think the GOP had any concept of how to deal with Donald Trump.
Since the latter days of the Reagan administration, in my opinion, the GOP has been hijacked (I'd call it an addiction) ever more to the right-wing evangelical vote.
THAT group, in particular, is particularly self-segregating (politically, if not socially and/or ethnically) and runs with blinders. There's no reasoning with them. They are lit by the fires of righteousness - not unlike many on the deep left-wing, that - so compromise is seen as weakness, not pragmatism.
I don't really get it. Sure, there's a lock-in of a pile of votes if you're anti-abortion, but at what cost? If the religious card could have been leveraged into breaking the lock the Dems have on the black vote through the Black southern Baptists, it might have been worth it. If it could have further been leveraged into a big chunk of the hispanic vote through their strong Catholicism, again, probably worth it.
But if you're not going to fracture those two very natural demographics, then why the HELL would you tie yourself to southern religious conservatives? Even if you ignore them completely, do you really think they'd vote for a Democrat?
The incompetent bunglers in the GOP party admin are too stupid to understand this. They've managed to change the party of business and fiscal responsibility into the "narrow minded racist religious zealotry party" AND AT THE SAME TIME shown themselves to be just as fiscally [i]incompetent[/i] and self-interested as the Democrats. So who are people going to vote for?
The Liberal agenda in the US is ascendant for lots of reasons from cultural to educational/indoctrinational. I'd even say it's philosophical as per Plato's Republic or even Aesop - the grasshoppers are having a wonderful time, the ants look ridiculous for their concerns. Them promoting a complete boob as their candidate for the highest political office displays either their complete lack of faith in the structures of our system (you might consider how monumental that is conceptually to a dogmatic conservative especially), or a troubling level of nihilism. Probably both.
The US needs an opposition party; but that needs to be a CREDIBLE opposition party. The GOP mandarins are far too busy in my opinion protecting their sinecure and personal wealth in Washington to perform that role any longer.
The point being that I think Trump's brand of populism isn't new; from the Gracchi in the Roman Republic to now, bomb-throwing crowd-pleasers have often riled the masses to their own benefit.
Where the GOP failed in this case is to understand the deep-seated and seething resentment in their core party over their failure to do anything in the last 16 years but kowtow to evangelicals, spending every cent of political capital on bullshit social issues that any *reasonable* conservative would consider NONE OF ANYONE'S BUSINESS.
Abortion? Tragic, and sad, but very much an issue between a woman, her doctor, and her conscience. As much as you may want to, one simply cannot legislate how women are going to value that unborn child. Gay marriage? Whether you "approve" of homosexuality is an intensely personal moral issue but in America, the foundation of this country is the premise that nobody has moral primacy over another. Not a hereditary king, nor some suburban megachurch member. In any case, the concept of marriage is one of stability and community - things conservatives used to consider important.
The resulting apathy of the core conservative mainstream means the nutters got to run the show...and thus you get a Donald Trump as a candidate. Frankly, I'm doubtful he's even conservative; his anti-Establishment message simply 'sells' better within a party that is a) out of power, and b) nominally about reducing the power of government anyway.
