>>26087
>Despite all the forces arrayed against Mr. Trump, the interviews show, the party has been gripped by a nearly incapacitating leadership vacuum and a paralytic sense of indecision and despair, as he has won smashing victories in South Carolina and Nevada. Donors have dreaded the consequences of clashing with Mr. Trump directly. Elected officials have balked at attacking him out of concern that they might unintentionally fuel his populist revolt. And Republicans have lacked someone from outside the presidential race who could help set the terms of debate from afar.

>The endorsement by Mr. Christie, a not unblemished but still highly regarded figure within the party’s elite — he is a former chairman of the Republican Governors Association — landed Friday with crippling force. It was by far the most important defection to Mr. Trump’s insurgency: Mr. Christie may give cover to other Republicans tempted to join Mr. Trump rather than trying to beat him. Not just the Stop Trump forces seemed in peril, but also the traditional party establishment itself.

>Should Mr. Trump clinch the presidential nomination, it would represent a rout of historic proportions for the institutional Republican Party, and could set off an internal rift unseen in either party for a half-century, since white Southerners abandoned the Democratic Party en masse during the civil rights movement.

>Former Gov. Michael O. Leavitt of Utah, a top adviser to Mr. Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said the party was unable to come up with a united front to quash Mr. Trump’s campaign.

>“There is no mechanism,” Mr. Leavitt said. “There is no smoke-filled room. If there is, I’ve never seen it, nor do I know anyone who has. This is going to play out in the way that it will.”

....

>Republicans have ruefully acknowledged that they came to this dire pass in no small part because of their own passivity. There were ample opportunities to battle Mr. Trump earlier; more than one plan was drawn up only to be rejected. Rivals who attacked him early, like Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, the former governors of Texas and Louisiana, received little backup and quickly faded.

>Late last fall, the strategists Alex Castellanos and Gail Gitcho, both presidential campaign veterans, reached out to dozens of the party’s leading donors, including the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the hedge-fund manager Paul Singer, with a plan to create a “super PAC” that would take down Mr. Trump. In a confidential memo, the strategists laid out the mission of a group they called “ProtectUS.”

>“We want voters to imagine Donald Trump in the Big Chair in the Oval Office, with responsibilities for worldwide confrontation at his fingertips,” they wrote in the previously unreported memo. Mr. Castellanos even produced ads portraying Mr. Trump as unfit for the presidency, according to people who saw them and who, along with many of those interviewed, insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.

>The two strategists, who declined to comment, proposed to attack Mr. Trump in New Hampshire over his business failures and past liberal positions, and emphasized the extreme urgency of their project. A Trump nomination would not only cause Republicans to lose the presidency, they wrote, “but we also lose the Senate, competitive gubernatorial elections and moderate House Republicans.”

>No major donors committed to the project, and it was abandoned. No other sustained Stop Trump effort sprang up in its place.

>Resistance to Mr. Trump still runs deep. The party’s biggest benefactors remain totally opposed to him. At a recent presentation hosted by the billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch, the country’s most prolific conservative donors, their political advisers characterized Mr. Trump’s record as utterly unacceptable, and highlighted his support for government-funded business subsidies and government-backed health care, according to people who attended.

>But the Kochs, like Mr. Adelson, have shown no appetite to intervene directly in the primary with decisive force.

>The American Future Fund, a conservative group that does not disclose its donors, announced plans on Friday to run ads blasting Mr. Trump for his role in an educational company that is alleged to have defrauded students. But there is only limited time for the commercials to sink in before some of the country’s biggest states award their delegates in early March.
...

>Instead, Mr. Trump’s challengers are staking their hopes on a set of guerrilla tactics and long-shot possibilities, racing to line up mainstream voters and interest groups against his increasingly formidable campaign. Donors and elected leaders have begun to rouse themselves for the fight, but perhaps too late.

>Two of Mr. Trump’s opponents have openly acknowledged that they may have to wrest the Republican nomination from him in a deadlocked convention.

>Speaking to political donors in Manhattan on Wednesday evening, Mr. Rubio’s campaign manager, Terry Sullivan, noted that most delegates are bound to a candidate only on the first ballot. Many of them, moreover, are likely to be party regulars who may not support Mr. Trump over multiple rounds of balloting, he added, according to a person present for Mr. Sullivan’s presentation, which was first reported by CNN.

>Advisers to Mr. Kasich, the Ohio governor, have told potential supporters that his strategy boils down to a convention battle. Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire senator who had endorsed Jeb Bush, said Mr. Kasich’s emissaries had sketched an outcome in which Mr. Kasich “probably ends up with the second-highest delegate count going into the convention” and digs in there to compete with Mr. Trump.

>Several senior Republicans, including Mr. Romney, have made direct appeals to Mr. Kasich to gauge his willingness to stand down and allow the party to unify behind another candidate. But Mr. Kasich has told at least one person that his plan is to win the Ohio primary on March 15 and gather the party behind his campaign if Mr. Rubio loses in Florida, his home state, on the same day.
...

>In Washington, Mr. Kasich’s persistence in the race has become a source of frustration. At Senate luncheons on Wednesday and Thursday, Republican lawmakers vented about Mr. Kasich’s intransigence, calling it selfishness.

>One senior Republican senator, noting that Mr. Kasich has truly contested only one of the first four states, complained: “He’s just flailing his arms around and having a wonderful time going around the country, and it just drives me up the wall.”

>Mr. McConnell was especially vocal, describing Mr. Kasich’s persistence as irrational because he has no plausible path to the nomination, several senators said.

>While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump’s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches.
...

>He has reminded colleagues of his own 1996 re-election campaign, when he won comfortably amid President Bill Clinton’s easy re-election. Of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has said, “We’ll drop him like a hot rock,” according to his colleagues.

>There is still hope that Mr. Rubio might be able to unite much of the party and slow Mr. Trump’s advance in a series of big-state primaries in March, and a host of top elected officials endorsed him over the last week. But Mr. Rubio has struggled to sideline Mr. Kasich and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is running a dogged campaign on the right. He has also been unable to win over several of his former rivals who might help consolidate the Republican establishment more squarely behind him.

>Mr. Rubio showed a lack of finesse in dealing with his fallen rivals’ injured egos.
...

>Mr. Christie had attacked Mr. Rubio contemptuously in New Hampshire, calling him shallow and scripted, and humiliating him in a debate. Nevertheless, Mr. Rubio made a tentative overture to Mr. Christie after his withdrawal from the presidential race. He left the governor a voice mail message, seeking Mr. Christie’s support and assuring him that he had a bright future in public service, according to people who have heard Mr. Christie’s characterization of the message.

>Mr. Christie, 53, took the message as deeply disrespectful and patronizing, questioning why “a 44-year-old” was telling him about his future, said people who described his reaction on the condition of anonymity. Further efforts to connect the two never yielded a direct conversation.

>Mr. Trump, by contrast, made frequent calls to Mr. Christie once he dropped out, a person close to the governor said. After the two met at Trump Tower on Thursday with their wives, Mr. Christie flew to Texas and emerged on Friday to back Mr. Trump and mock Mr. Rubio as a desperate candidate near the end of a losing campaign.
...

>Efforts to reconcile Mr. Rubio and Mr. Bush, a former governor of Florida, have been scarcely more successful, dating to before the South Carolina primary, when Mr. Rove reached out to their aides to broker a cease-fire, according to Republicans briefed on the conversations. It did not last.

>Mr. Bush has been nearly silent since quitting the race Feb. 20, playing golf with his son Jeb Jr. in Miami and turning to the task of thank-you notes. In a Wednesday conference call with supporters, he did not express a preference among the remaining contenders. When Mr. Rubio called him on Monday, their conversation did not last long, two people briefed on it said, and Mr. Rubio did not ask for his endorsement.

>“There’s this desire, verging on panic, to consolidate the field,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former supporter of Mr. Bush. “But I don’t see any movement at all.”

>Mr. Rubio’s advisers were also thwarted in their efforts to secure an endorsement from Mr. Romney, whom they lobbied strenuously after the Feb. 20 South Carolina primary.

>Mr. Romney had been eager to tilt the race, and even called Mr. Christie after he ended his campaign to vent about Mr. Trump and say he must be stopped. On the night of the primary, Mr. Romney was close to endorsing Mr. Rubio himself, people familiar with his deliberations said.
...

>Yet Mr. Romney pulled back, instead telling advisers that he would take on Mr. Trump directly. After a Tuesday night dinner with former campaign aides, during which he expressed a sense of horror at the Republican race, Mr. Romney made a blunt demand Wednesday on Fox News: Mr. Trump must release his tax returns to prove he was not concealing a “bombshell” political vulnerability.

>Mr. Trump responded only with casual derision, dismissing Mr. Romney on Twitter as “one of the dumbest and worst candidates in the history of Republican politics.”

>Mr. Romney is expected to withhold his support before the voting this week on the so-called Super Tuesday, but some of his allies have urged him to endorse Mr. Rubio before Michigan and Idaho vote March 8. Mr. Romney grew up in Michigan, and many Idahoans are fellow Mormons.

>But already, a handful of senior party leaders have struck a conciliatory tone toward Mr. Trump. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader, said on television that he believed he could work with him as president. Many in the party acknowledged a growing mood of resignation.

>Fred Malek, the finance chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said the party’s mainstream had simply run up against the limits of its influence.

>“There’s no single leader and no single institution that can bring a diverse group called the Republican Party together, behind a single candidate,” Mr. Malek said. “It just doesn’t exist.”

>On Friday, a few hours after Mr. Christie endorsed him, Mr. Trump collected support from a second governor, who in a radio interview said Mr. Trump could be “one of the greatest presidents.”

>That governor was Paul LePage.

tl;dr: We're in the 'Empire Strikes Back' phase. "Return of the Jedi' is next.

Can't wait to make America great again

It's rather ironic that being a coalition of groups held together solely by a common thread of "We aren't the Democrats" is both what united the Republican party for all these years and is also what is responsible for them never uniting.

Whose betting Trump either totally reconstructs the Republican party from the inside out or outright makes a new Party?

>>26109
There are a variety of 'coalitions' like you describe. Like the "Stop Hillary" faction, and remnants of the Tea Party groups. Then there are the lobbyists with favorites, and PACs run by political meddlers like Soros on the left and the Adleson on the right. On top of all that Wall Street is a separate group unto itself.

Each of these factions is vying for control (or at least steering priviliges) for what people used to call the GOP. Welcome to Big Tent Politics 101, I guess.

Why don't they nominate Hillary?

>>26110
> and remnants of the Tea Party groups.
Hold the phone - "remnants" of the Tea Party?! How are they no more?! There strength is still intimiditable!

>>26148
They aren't really unified

they did this to themselves, they should have backed Cruz instead of Rubio. Now they can enjoy Trump, you reap what you sow.

>>26155
Rubio is such a lame candidate it's not even funny.

>>26158
he really is, he has such a small demographic of appeal, when he loses Florida, its going to be absolutely hysterical.

>>26160

none of them are likeable.

Cruz is too close with Wall Street.
Rubio has zero appeal and is trying to follow Santorium's failed strategy of mentioning jesus every other sentence.
Jeb was too closely aligned with the Bush legacy, I'm not sure why anyone thought the average Joe would go for this.
Paul is too easily labeled a libertarian kook and pushed to the side.
Carson had appeal but he is just too out of it.
Christie was dead in the water with the bridgegate affair and his tendecny to lean on scary criminals was a strategy that was going to fail, especially since rural people are dealing with more and more drug problems and don't want to hear cousin sally is going to jail/prison.
The HP lady was even more unlikeable than Clinton and he ability to lay-off workers in order to make the shareholders rich was not going to play in her favor.

The whole field was terribly unlikeable. Honestly, as much I as hate Walker I'm surprised he wasn't the main pick for the party. His attacks on organized labor, pushing right to work, and reducing funding for the universities all pushed the idea of individuals being responsible for themselves which was an easy sell.

>>26165
> his tendecny to lean on scary criminals was a strategy that was going to fail, especially since rural people are dealing with more and more drug problems and don't want to hear cousin sally is going to jail/prison.
You do know jails take better care of druggies than a clinic does...

>>26169
>You do know jails take better care of druggies than a clinic does...

the fact that you believe that is what allows the prison industry to continue to be a cancer leeching off our nation.

"I want the problem to be far away and out of sight" rather than solving the problem is jejune and typically right-wing.

>>26169

do you have any citations to back up this claim? can you find any peer-reviewed articles that state "it is likely better that we send drug users to prison/jail than to send them to rehab."

Taking this a step further you are going to support the notion that prohibition did a good job dealing with drunks? Prohibition resulted in the highest murder rate America would see until the war on drugs, prohibition actually increased the number of individuals that drank and made it "cool/acceptable" for women to drink.

Fuck 'em.

>>26192
Just every celebrity ever released from prison has improved from drugs due to prison. Go watch an E-true Hollywood movie some time.

>>26199
That might be true for celebrities that get special treatment and lots of isolation. Real drug users who go to general pop end to stay on drugs once they are inside.

>>26203
Yeah well prisons are a controlled environment we should build on their model.

>first they ignore you
>then they ridicule you
>then they fight you
>then you president
If the GOP don't get their shit together and the demos run Hillary, Trump will easily be our next President.

>>26208
Who's prisons? The government's, surely but the private prisons, no.

>>26192
>prohibition actually increased the number of individuals that drank and made it "cool/acceptable" for women to drink.
Women still drink.

>>26199

oh my lol. citing E-True Hollywood as a legit source of information.

11/10 troll

>>26165
Why does no one like Rand Paul? Aside being aligned with libertanians. I thought he was one of the better choices for the republican party.

>>26222
He's like Ron Paul except a slightly better speaker and younger. Thus we hate.

>>26165
>Governor John Kasich
D-did you forget?
Okay then,
...bye.

>>26165
Bush was the best contender lets be real, but he didn't accept his family name until the last debate with the 'im tired of the attacks on my family'.

We'll see, I've heard rumblings of a Huckabee nom today/morrow [best today to let that sink in b4 tomorrow].

>>26287
> Huckabee nomination
So I guess the new GOP rules are when Trump reaches 500 delegates - just elect anybody!

>>26311
What does this even mean?

>>26333
They're going to give Trump the shaft and throw the Primaries to a hispanic.

>>26337
And ensure a rep loss? I'd buy it. Regan must be rolling in his grave.

>>26211
This 2bh. Except the demos will surely run Hillary, seeing how Bernie is a massive flop. The Trump presidency is pretty much the writing on the wall.

>>26222
I liked him. He seemed the most intelligent and informed person on the stage. And he didn't want to start more words

>>26169
>You do know jails take better care of druggies than a clinic does

There is no treatment at all in prison. You're just locked up.

>>26356

I wouldn't label Bernie as a massive flop. The number of small donations he got is impressive. And his ability to at least rattle Clinton a bit is impressive considering the dem party went out their way to clear the road for Clinton.

Shit, even the schedule of the dem debates was done in a way that was likely to reduce viewership (lessen the chance anyone else's name would be recognized by the average voter).

Win or lose I think Bernie did a good job at least rattling the dem party. He certainly didn't do as well as Trump did, but then again he isn't the reality star Trump is.

>>26399
>There is no treatment at all in prison. You're just locked up.
It varies wildly among different states, and it isn't necessarily a partisan thing. California or Nevada would give you treatment in the right circumstances if you were in a state lockup, but New York or Texas wouldn't.

>>26222
He was the only sane one.

>cuckservatives sell themselves out for decades, never actually being conservative but only sucking corporate cock
>complain that people turn to a guy like trump

>>26405
I agree. I also think that showing that the party can be sidestepped by old fashioned politics and populism is enough to give the next Democratic outsider a better chance.

>>26441
THE BABY BOOMERS REGAN

>>26385
>>26430

lol not at all.

if he played it cool instead of trying to be the "IM PISSED OFF YEAHH!!!!!" guy... he would have appeared more sane and intelligent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtglptO4v34