Only One Thing Can Stop Donald Trump [View all]

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33984-focus-only-one-thing-can-stop-donald-trump

So who can stop Trump? Not the fat-cat GOP donors whose doomed anti-Trump strategies keep being floated to the press. Not the earnest members of the reality-based community who diligently write articles explaining that, yes, Trump’s latest proposal is unconstitutional, impossible to implement, racist, and a boost to the very ISIS ideologues Trump wants to destroy. Not the fact-checkers who show that almost every bit of evidence Trump cites, from nonexistent crowds of Muslims cheering 9/11 in New Jersey to junk polls of Muslim-American sentiment, is a lie. Trump’s adherents are going to accept Trump’s facts, just as they have accepted such “facts” from the other conservative leaders who have claimed Barack Obama was born in Africa and that climate change is a hoax.

No, the only people who can stop Trump are the obvious ones: those who actually vote or caucus in Republican primary states. Their verdict will be decisive, and come February we will start to hear from them directly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina (where Trump’s ban-Muslims oration played to a standing ovation last weekend). It’s been a standard refrain of Establishment Republicans since the summer that Trump’s toxic views don’t represent their party — and, indeed, if Republicans don’t actually vote for Trump, he’s done, and probably as an independent as well. But what if he does attract voters in numbers consistent with his polling? In less than two months from now, we are finally going to start getting a definitive answer to the question that’s riveted us for months: Who are the Republicans?