Remember the pledge? Touted, at the time by what passes for leadership in the Republican Party? Yeah, that's pretty much been thrown out the window.
Trump drops pledge to back Republican Presidential nominee other than himself. Steve Holland, Reuters
And with that, the Trump destruction of the GOP is all but complete. No matter who wins the nomination in Cleveland, there will not be a unified party in November and there will be a significant amount of voters staying home, or voting 3rd party or voting for Hillary.
It doesn't matter now who wins, the GOP is going to lose because this was Trump's plan all along. While I'm sure he thought that there was an outside chance he might become the nominee he was in this more for fun and ego. In a nutshell, he just wanted to see how far he could carry the charade and how many knuckle-dragging voters he could bring with him.
By all evidence, he got about 35-40% of the Republican Party, and around 5% of Democrats. To be fair however, 100% of Democrats are A-OK selecting either a candidate under federal investigation or a man with absolutely zero understanding of economics as their standard-bearer so, at least, the sane part of the right has them beat.
Unfortunately, I don't think there are enough sane people in America to do much about what appears to be more and more likely to happen. In a choice between an idiot, someone absent a moral code and an ignoramus the opportunist begins to have an awful lot of appeal. How again did the former greatest, most free country in the world end up a regulatory state with higher incarceration rates than all except the most brutal dictatorships? How did the country that generated more wealth creation than any other in history become a rigid, stratified land with less chance for economic mobility than the old Indian caste system? And how did the country that gave us Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Ronald Reagan end up with a quadrant of candidates such as this?
It's very easy to cast our gaze at the "establishment" which many in the Tea Party are wont to do, but the reality is that we've led ourselves down this road, we've driven the car off this cliff. We are exactly where we deserve to be.
The 2016 Presidential election is no fluke or accident, it's not the fault of the 'man' or the 'other party' or even the Illuminati or some nefarious overseer who's set this up for their own personal amusement.
The Bronzed Ego, Her Highness and the Angry White man are constructs of voter apathy, the continued insulting of "nerd" culture and a society that would rather vote for American Idol than in elections. (Although, to be fair, given their level of attention perhaps it would be better if the proletariat stay focused on reality TV and not on politics?)
There have been a lot of articles written about how less people should vote on one side and how that is the worst suggestion in the world from the other. The "right" to vote is held sacrosanct in America with good reason. (Although, it should be noted, that many people [i.e. felons, non-citizens] do NOT have the right to vote nor should they.)
What's ignored in the entire discussion is that yes, every citizen of the United State's provided they are competent and not disqualified, has the 'right' to vote in America but that carries with it the 'responsibility' of voting responsibly and in an informed manner. It's also not mentioned that Democracy is not a right that was given by our creator, but one that was created by man and is, as a result, very imperfect.
As we slink toward the party conventions on a trail of FBI Investigations and non-crime, crime reports of campaign managers grabbing female reporters remember this:
As in all elections, we are getting the government we deserve.
