08-11-2016, 05:43 PM
Lemon Drop wrote:
Yesterday I got to chat with my friend who was a Washington state delegate to the Republican convention in Cleveland, is a member of the national rules committee, and was in Sen. Mike Lee's anti-Trump group. (She supported Ted Cruz). She said that conservatives were basically told to shut up by the Trump campaign and are left with no place to go in this election. She said the booing during Cruz's speech was orchestrated by the Trump campaign, which had seen the speech in advance and allowed it to go forward. The goal was to humiliate Cruz but it probably backfired with a lot of Tea Party voters.
She describes Trump's candidacy as a "hostile takeover" of the party and said that the Trump campaign and his supporters have done more damage to the party from the inside than Democrats could ever do from the outside.
Now - in my mind there's some irony here because Tea Party conservatives themselves did a "hostile takeover'" over of the party in 2008, and now find themselves on the outside looking in. And more moderate Republicans have been doing that going back to 1994.
So I really do wonder what comes next for the GOP -
There is only one reasonable response the Republican Party can initiate for moderation. It's their party. Their job for this private entity is to present it's best, most competitive candidates for election to public office. Develop firewalls designed to preserve the health and integrity of their party. Had they had the Dems Super Delegates, Trump isn't the nominee. Hillary would be whipping someone else's ass.
Job one now would be to pull all support for Trump, redirect it to down ballot races. Preserve what dignity they have left and live to fight another day. They cannot allow him to win.