Sic transit the GOP. After a convincing sweep of the “Acela primaries” last nigh, it seems there is very little standing between a reality TV star-slash-thirty year figure of fun and the nomination of a major American political party for President of the United States. This is only possible because of the final meltdown of the GOP, succumbing to the drug overdose of Confederacy that they started getting high on in the Nixon Administration and started mainlining in the 1990s.
The Republican party is without form, and void. If there were any sort of effective leadership available to the party, there would never have been 17 candidates for the nomination running at once. Ciphers and jokes like George Pataki or Jim Gilmore or Bobby Jindal would have been shown the door with a quickness. But as long as there were over a dozen candidates, it was possible for anyone pulling 6 to 8 percent in the polls to believe they had a shot up until Iowa, and sure enough, everyone stayed in, which only worked out for those candidates who already had name recognition. Only two did, and while the name Trump was its own sort of joke, the name Bush was shorthand for disaster, and a lot of money and resources were wasted in the service of the delusion that what America really craved was a third ride on the Bush-Go-Round.
So. In the absence of any real leadership or guidance, the teabagger elements of the GOP – which were always the base, never some independent entity; the Tea Party branding was a remarkable feat of identity-laundering for Republican base voters – went with what they always wanted anyway: the person who could most effectively sling the shit. No need for experience, no need for coherent policy, just an endless barrage of talk-radio-style bullshit and a personality and track record that could only be described as a moron’s idea of what a rich person is. No one ever broke the momentum, because the field never consolidated – and even if it had, around whom could it? Ben Carson, another political zero whose entire claim to fame was being a black doctor who told off the President at a prayer breakfast once? Carly Fiorina, whose claim to power revolved around two X chromosomes and a stint as the worst CEO in Silicon Valley and the most inept losing candidate for Senate in California history? Ted Cruz, whose own GOP colleagues hate him worse than being caught in bed with a dead girl and a live boy at once? Too late, the party seemed to realize that John Kasich was the only viable candidate with a sufficiently conservative record – made much less risible by his surroundings – but that ship had already sailed by the time they figured it out.
So now we get Trump. Which is a handy out for the GOP again: if he gets his ass kicked up between his shoulderblades in November, they can write him off as a fluke, a one-off, a freak accident, and not a true conservative anyway – and double-down to the right. The GOP’s big money donors, many of whom may actually believe in Never Trump, will probably stack their money behind congressional candidates in a Stop Hillary movement, ensuring that even if they get a second Clinton in the White House they’ll be able to keep everything tied in knots as they have for most of the last six years. And come 2020, we probably get another Ted Cruz run or something else, because this is all the GOP has left anymore. Had Cruz been the nominee, and gotten keelhauled by the Dems in November, it might have finally broken the back of the Confederates and convinced the GOP that they needed to go a different direction – but just as with Romney and McCain, Trump can be written off as a bad candidate and not a Real True Authentic Conservative, and they’ll keep going down the same road.
The wheel is still spinning, but the hamster’s dead.