Republicans: Save your party, don’t give to Trump - By George F. Will

[DonViejo]

“There’s an old adage about a vat of wine standing next to a vat of sewage. Add a cup of wine to the sewage, and it is still sewage. But add a cup of sewage to the wine, and it is no longer wine but sewage. Is this what Donald Trump has done to our politics?”

— Martha Bayles, in the Claremont Review of Books

-snip-

In Trump, Republicans have someone whose reputation is continental only in being broadly known. He illustrates Daniel Boorstin’s definition of a celebrity as someone well-known for his well-knownness. It will be wonderful if Trump tries to translate notoriety into fulfillment of his vow — as carefully considered as anything else about his candidacy — to carry New York and California. He should be taunted into putting his meager campaign funds where his ample mouth is. Every dime or day he squanders on those states will contribute to a redemptive outcome, a defeat so humiliating — so continental — that even Republicans will be edified by it.

Trump’s campaign has less cash ($1.3 million) than some congressional candidates have, so Republican donors have never been more important than they are at this moment. They can save their party by not aiding its nominee.

Events already have called his bluff about funding himself and thereby being uniquely his own man. His wealth is insufficient. Only he knows what he is hiding by being the first presidential nominee in two generations not to release his tax returns. It is reasonable to assume that the returns would refute many of his assertions about his net worth, his charitableness and his supposed business wizardry. They might also reveal some awkwardly small tax payments.

-snip-

Various Republican moral contortionists continue their semantic somersaults about “supporting” but not “endorsing” Trump. In Cleveland, they will point him toward the highest elective office in a country they profess to love but that he calls “a hellhole.” When asked in a 1990 Playboy interview about his historical role models, he mentioned Winston Churchill but enthused about others who led “the ultimate life”:

“I’ve always thought that Louis B. Mayer led the ultimate life, that Flo Ziegfeld led the ultimate life, that men like Darryl Zanuck and Harry Cohn did some creative and beautiful things. The ultimate job for me would have been running MGM in the ’30s and ’40s — pre-television.” Yes, that job, not the one he seeks.

full column:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-save-your-party-dont-give-to-trump/2016/06/22/f56a8cda-37eb-11e6-a254-2b336e293a3c_story.html

[BumRushDaShow]

1. They stopped listening to George Will back in 2008.

[Nonhlanhla]

2. The GOP has been sewage for a while

Trump is just the even stinkier version.

[liberal N proud]

3. That is some pretty rotten wine

I don't think Trump is polluting the GOP, he is the turd floating on top of the sewage pit called the GOP.

He is a product of their own making.

[msanthrope]

4. George...the chickens have come home to roost. nt

[Vogon_Glory]

5. George, Trump-mania is merely a collection of bubbled

of what the Republicans have been brewing an stirring in their cauldrons since the mid-1970's. This is what so-called "principled conservatives," Movement Conservatives and the Tea Party has made of the GOP. You brewed it, you'll have to drink it, and if it proves fatal to the Republican Party, that's just too darn bad.

And former RINOs will join centrists, Democrats, and liberals will watch the Republican Party's death throes with profound satisfaction.

[CobaltBlue]

7. …‘Coattails’

At least with the last three presidential election cycles—2004, 2008, 2012—people have been voting for same-party outcomes in about 80 percent of states with scheduled U.S. Senate elections.

In other words, say there are 33 or 34 on the schedule (not counting “specials”). From those 33 or 34 states, about 25 to 27 result in the same party winning a state at both the presidential and senatorial levels.

That ends up reducing the spilt decisions to just a handful of states. In 2012, this included the presidential and senatorial party flippings, at both levels, in Indiana (Republican Mitt Romney and first-term winning Democrat Joe Donnelly)—plus the ticket-spitting ones from Missouri (Republican Mitt Romney and re-elected Democrat Claire McCaskill); Montana (Republican Mitt Romney and re-elected Democrat Jon Tester); Nevada (re-elected Democrat Barack Obama and first full-term winning Republican Dean Heller); North Dakota (Republican Mitt Romney and first-term winning Democrat Heidi Heitkamp); and West Virginia (Republican Mitt Romney and first full-term winning Democrat Joe Manchin).

People are, as has become the trend, solidifying political party preference as voted on via a statewide level—U.S. President and U.S. Senate. One way one can tell is to look at an applicable scheduled state to see an outcome of same-party carriage, and whether it was the presidential or senatorial nominee who performed better; yet, sometimes their numbers are so close that there is little difference. (That was the case, in 2012, in California with re-elected Democrats Barack Obama and Dianne Feinstein as well in Texas with Republicans Mitt Romney and first-term winner Ted Cruz.)

Republicans are not going to easily take George Will’s advice. If their party is going to fail to flip the presidency, with nominee Donald Trump, they will really hope for a lot of ticket-splitting outcomes that allow their U.S. senators to win in states which color blue for Hillary Clinton. (No one wants that more than 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain from Arizona, a state which is in a good position to flip Democratic at least with the presidential level should Hillary Clinton win nationally by around +10.) But, the reality is that—by recent voting patterns—down-ballot races show that there is no real political ability of a candidate wanting and/or needing to be separating from a bomb of a party’s top nominee. They are, in much respect, married to each other.