The GOP establishment is belatedly learning that there are very real and frightening consequences to inviting ignorance embracing Christian extremists, racists, nativists, and those fighting a rear guard action against modernity into one's political party in droves while driving rational, logic based members out. Yes, turning out the Christofascists and white supremacists over the years helped win elections in the short term, Richard Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and George W. Bush's anti-gay agenda in 2004 are examples, but once the barbarians are through the gates, they can prove to be beyond control. This is the lesson now playing out on the national stage much to the shock of sane Americans and nation's around the world. Indeed, to many, America must look like an insane asylum where the patients have overwhelmed the orderlies and medical staff. A piece in the New York Times looks at the unraveling of the GOP and the lunacy of Trump supporters rallying to a man who has offered ZERO policy plans and relies on sound bites and vulgarity. Here are excerpts:
From Michigan to Louisiana to California on Friday, rank-and-file Republicans expressed mystification, dismissal and contempt regarding the instructions that their party’s most high-profile leaders were urgently handing down to them: Reject and defeat Donald J. Trump.
Their angry reactions, in the 24 hours since Mitt Romney and John McCain urged millions of voters to cooperate in a grand strategy to undermine Mr. Trump’s candidacy, have captured the seemingly inexorable force of a movement that still puzzles the Republican elite and now threatens to unravel the party they hold dear.
In interviews, even lifelong Republicans who cast a ballot for Mr. Romney four years ago rebelled against his message and plan. “I personally am disgusted by it — I think it’s disgraceful,” said Lola Butler, 71, a retiree from Mandeville, La., who voted for Mr. Romney in 2012. “You’re telling me who to vote for and who not to vote for? Please.”
“There’s nothing short of Trump shooting my daughter in the street and my grandchildren — there is nothing and nobody that’s going to dissuade me from voting for Trump,” Ms. Butler said.
The furious campaign now underway to stop Mr. Trump and the equally forceful rebellion against it captured the essence of the party’s breakdown over the past several weeks: Its most prominent guardians, misunderstanding their own voters, antagonize them as they try to reason with them, driving them even more energetically to Mr. Trump’s side.
As Mr. Romney amplified his pleas on Friday, Mr. Trump snubbed a major meeting of Republican activists and leaders after rumblings that protesters were prepared to demonstrate against him there, in the latest sign of Mr. Trump’s break from the apparatus of the party whose nomination he is marching toward.
As polls showed Mr. Trump likely to capture the Louisiana primary on Saturday, the biggest prize among states holding contests this weekend, the party establishment in Washington seemed seized by anxiety and despair. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, a long-running gathering of traditional conservatives, attendees feared that they were witnessing an event that has not occurred in more than a century: the breaking apart of a major American political party.
Steve Forbes, the publisher and two-time Republican presidential candidate, summed up the mood at the event. “Parties,” he said, “don’t usually commit suicide,” suggesting the party was well on its way with Mr. Trump.
The problem, for figures like Mr. Forbes and Mr. Romney, is that Mr. Trump’s supporters seem profoundly uninterested at the moment with the image, expectations or traditions of the Republican Party, according to interviews with more than three dozen voters, elected officials and operatives. They are, in many cases, hostile to it.
Voters have not taken kindly to the recommendation, describing the request as a patronizing directive from an elite figure who thoroughly misunderstands their feelings of alienation from the political system. (Soon after, Mr. McCain endorsed his remarks.)Conservative talk radio shows lit up Friday with incensed callers who said they were “livid,” “mad” and “on the verge of tears” as they listened to Mr. Romney scoldingly describe what he called Mr. Trump’s misogyny, vulgarity and dishonesty, and urged them to abandon him.
Frustrated Republicans seized on Mr. Romney’s status as a party insider who was insulated from the realities, indignities and rage of average Americans headed to the polls this year. “He’s an establishment figure,” said Faith Sheptoski-Forbush of Romulus, Mich. “So that’s what you get.”
For years I was a Cassandra of what would happen to the GOP. My concerns were dismissed and, after I came out, I was dragged through the mud and ridiculed for my "life style choice." The current GOP deserves every bit of its misfortune and self-inflicted suicide.
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