From Politico.com:
Establishment Republicans are reckoning with something they thought would never happen: That it might soon be too late to stop Donald Trump.
With the controversial businessman the clear front-runner heading into Nevada and next week’s Super Tuesday contests, there’s an emerging consensus that the odds of dislodging him are growing longer by the day. Whispered fears that Trump could become the Republican nominee have given way to a din of resigned conventional wisdom – with top party officials and strategists openly wondering what the path to defeating him will be.
GOP wakes up to Trump nightmare - POLITICO
It’s more than a little late for this “despair” now. The signs of such a possible disaster for the Party were all around as early as the summer when Trump began launching into increasingly inflammatory rhetoric, embracing increasingly extreme positions, and offering little more than ambiguous promises that he would be a ‘great President.’ This is not some unexpected and unforeseeable outcome.
Back in July, Republican leaders began worrying about the implications of Trump’s candidacy (
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...c75b4c-25ab-11e5-b72c-2b7d516e1e0e_story.html). Fearing a possible third-party run, while losing sight of the bigger picture concerned with the Republican and Conservative brands, they chose the path of accommodation. In 1992, when confronted with a similarly unpalatable run by white Supremacist and former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, an earlier generation of Republican leaders chose to thwart his run.
Political expediency has high opportunity costs. Now, with the momentum of his New Hampshire and South Carolina primary victories and the passage of time that permitted the charismatic Trump to transform his supporters into tenaciously loyal followers, Trump is in a far stronger position than he was back in the summer. The Republican National Committee’s failure to mobilize appropriately to address the threat of a rising Trump candidacy coupled with what had been a highly fragmented field has brought things to their position where a Trump victory could inflict lasting damage on the Republican brand and shatter the American Conservative movement.
As I noted earlier in this thread, “The Republican leadership needs the political courage (and foresight) to bar him from the nominating process as it did with David Duke in 1992. If not, it has only itself to blame...”
At this time, a Trump victory is still not a certainty. The risks of such an outcome can be reduced, but only with the RNC’s demonstrating the kind of political courage and foresight that has been lacking to date:
1. The RNC should press the bottom two candidates (Kasich and Carson) to abandon the race.
2. Bring together Senators Cruz and Rubio, press them to cease the character attacks on one another, and tell them to “agree to disagree” on one another’s position on the immigration issue and cease using those differences to damage one another.
3. Make clear that if Senators Cruz and Rubio insist on character attacks, they will lose access to the RNC’s voter data.
Bold leadership is now required if Trump is to be defeated. While a Trump defeat is not assured, bold leadership can still increase prospects of such an outcome.
In the end, I don’t expect any such leadership from the RNC. Timidity is not something that can easily be abandoned once it is embraced. Timidity is a framework that imprisons leaders leaving them to the whims of fate and random chance.
Therefore, at this time, it clearly is “Advantage Trump.” In the shadows lurks a real possibility that what has long been a vigorous two-party competitive system could be transformed into a de facto single party system as a possible Trump victory drains the Republican Party and Conservative movement of appeal to the broader electorate.