Brian Buetler says: He told us so (Live from the Republicans' Self-Made Trump Hell)
Brian Buetler (March 1, 2016): [Donald Trump’s Nomination Will Have Real, Lasting Upsides][]: "In 2008, Republicans suffered a landslide defeat after placing Sarah Palin on the ballot and setting her loose... with the overwhelming approval of the conservative commentariat, to whip up an ugly right-wing populism...
...Upon losing, Republicans engaged in almost no reflection before launching a campaign of massive resistance to Barack Obama’s presidency. In 2012, Republicans selected Mitt Romney, an anti-immigrant, centimillionaire businessman as their presidential nominee, and he in turn selected the most influential movement conservative in the country, Paul Ryan, to be his running mate. The two... campaigned as tribunes against a culture that promoted “takers” (i.e. poor minorities) at the expense of “makers” (i.e. white businessmen). Despite losing that election too, the massive resistance campaign continued.... Liberals complained to and warned conservatives—as they have for decades—that Republican politicians were pandering to racists for votes. Conservatives, as is their custom, reacted poorly to this critique....
2012 election data... showed Republicans hemorrhaging support among Hispanic and other minority voters. The GOP responded... by trying to hustle an immigration reform bill through Congress before the very voters they’d been pandering to got a hold of the legislation and killed it. That effort also failed. Conservatives remain loath to acknowledge the obvious, but the liberal critique of their politics is correct, and it took the Donald Trump juggernaut to wake them up to it. Indeed, the fact that liberals had a more accurate read on conservative politics than most professional conservatives seems to bother many conservatives more than the substance of the critique itself. “It would be terrible to think that the left was right about the right all these years,” Bret Stephens wrote... at the Wall Street Journal....
The downside risks of a Trump nomination are undeniable. But they are far smaller than the salubrious effect his primary victory would have on the country if it forced upon Republicans the kind of reckoning the 2008 and 2012 elections didn’t.... Nobody should be sanguine about Trump winning the nomination. If this election has proven anything, it’s that politics can be chaotic...
