I have stated all along during this election process that I am a member of the #NeverTrump movement. It had less to do with what the left is decrying as his "racist, sexist and other -ist" followers (I have frequently been termed all of the above by progressives in the past) and more with the complete and utter moral and conservative failings of the man himself.
In short, beating Hillary Clinton was less important to me than keeping my head held high.
I also understood that, for many in the GOP, beating Ms. Clinton was the most important thing of all. It "trumped" ethics concerns or the fact that the Bronzed Ego had several positions that were decidedly not conservative. That winning and (ostensibly) gaining control of the SCOTUS and ending the Affordable Care Act and repudiating Obama were of primary concern.
I get that, and I don't begrudge those people their moment of joy.
You won, congratulations. Enjoy the party, this is now your show, do what you will.
This is how it works in a representative democracy. Far from having a "mandate" however, the GOP does have controlling interest in the executive branch, the legislative branch, and most of the same at the State level. It should not be overlooked how powerful their position is. In fact, Democrats right now are in a worse position than were the GOP eight years ago, because even then the GOP had a fairly dominating presence in the States, which the DEM's lack.
They have the filibuster in the Federal Senate, and a few State's that are very blue, with little GOP opposition. In short, for the next two years (at least, because the 2018 map is not friendly to them) they are going to find themselves scrambling, trying desperately to forge a message that's bigger than "we hate you America" which is where they're likely to go under the lead of Sens Warren and Sanders.
It will not be a nice time to be a Democrat as the progressives will start to turn inward and eat their own.
The coming Democratic fissure is potentially the greatest underrated story of the current election. Suppressed by the bigger, and more public reality of the GOP split.
Except now, I'd call it a GOP take-over, because the win by Trump, and the vitriol that is already springing from it is only going to get worse over time. The Trumpets who said to NeverTrump members "we don't need you" were right.
And we were wrong. Our idea that the GOP was still, at heart, a conservative party was mistaken. The so-called "conservative wave" that always appeared to be just over the horizon was a mirage, as was the libertarian revolution that was destroyed in vitro when the the Libertarian Party nominated Gary Johnson and liberal Bill Weld.
Instead, the GOP of today is a much more populist place, inviting big-government to sit down at the table when it suits their needs and the Libertarian Party is in disarray. Meanwhile, those of us who formed the core of the NeverTrump movement find ourselves on the outs, without a political home and unlikely to find one soon.
Evan McMullin, the independent conservative who ran a long-shot campaign in Utah hoping to.....win some electoral votes is correct when he states that Conservatives are out of the GOP but he's wrong in saying that we should abandon it. We have been forcefully evicted. And there's no reason for the GOP to let us back in any time soon. The election results have shown that we're not needed. They will go about ostensibly acting like conservative principles matter, but they will govern as they always have.
And that there is no longer a conservative party in America.
Not my circus, Not my monkeys. Which, all things considered, is probably for the best.
