Age of the Geek

By: 
Travis Fischer

Where is the horn that was blowing?
 
     How did it come to this?
     Barring a plot twist so contrived that Shonda Rhimes wouldn’t put it in “Scandal,” Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for President of the United States of America.
     Seventeen candidates ranging from center-right establishment people to extreme right zealots, and the last man standing is a reality TV star shouting his way to a nomination.
     How does this happen? The GOP has been at war with itself for years now, but that was a battle between the establishment leadership and the far right Tea Party.
     Trump is neither.
     The establishment hates him because he’s taking a wrecking ball to their platform while the Tea Party hates him because he’s too socially liberal, and yet here we are.
     Let’s just take a step back and recap what has happened here.
     Ted Cruz, a man who former Speaker of the House John Boehner recently called “Lucifer in the flesh,” somehow became the last great hope for the GOP to stop the Trump campaign. He’s largely responsible for the ideological civil war within the party and in the end the party united behind him in an open attempt to subvert the will of the primary voters and block Trump’s nomination.
     I have to be honest, I was hoping the Cruz/Fiorina campaign would make it through July, if only to see what new cringe-worthy horrors would occur as Cruz and his running mate continued their attempts to mimic human behavior.
     Fiorina may now have the record for shortest VP campaign in history, but the song she sang during her announcement rally will live on in my nightmares forever.
     Of course there was an actual establishment Republican still running, but for the last two months John Kasich has been in fourth place in a three-man race. His delegate count trailed behind Marco Rubio, who dropped out in March.
     The tragic irony is that, according to every recent general election match-up poll, Kasich is the only Republican candidate that can defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election. The one person most likely to give Republicans the outcome they want is the one they have soundly and definitively rejected at every step of the primary.
     Instead, they picked Trump.
     So now Republicans, particularly those that have an election of their own to worry about, have a choice to make.
     Option One: Acknowledge Donald Trump as the new face of conservatism and stand behind him to see if his improbable rise takes him all the way to the White House. If he makes it, they’ll have taken the White House at the cost of their identity, policies, platform and conscience. If he crashes and burns, he’ll likely bring the whole party down with him, flipping the Senate and possibly some states as he falls.
     Option Two: Cut and run. The polls have been very kind to Trump in the primary. Less so in the general. Republicans that admit the odds aren’t in their favor may avoid going all in to make sure there’s still a party around if Trump loses. Some are even calling for a third party candidate to carry the Republican platform.
     Of course, merely withholding support for Trump, to say nothing of splitting the ticket, might be seen as effectively giving the White House to the Democrats.
     There is no good ending for establishment Republicans here. Several of them have already, begrudgingly, fallen in line behind Trump to various degrees of enthusiasm.
     Bobby Jindal, who once called Trump a “non-serious, unstable, substance free candidate” and an “ego-maniacal madman who has no principals,” has now offered his endorsement. Mike Huckabee dislikes Trump’s position on abortion rights, gay marriage and Israel, but he’s “all in” with Trump too. It seems every recent endorsement of Trump seems to come with a list of reasons why the endorser doesn’t like him.
     On the other hand, it’s doubtful you’ll see any Trump stickers on the back of Bush family vehicles. Jeb Bush has practically been in hiding after his $116 million campaign netted him four delegates, 1 percent of the popular vote and the saddest call for applause ever made, but just a couple week’s ago he was calling for a contested convention to keep Trump from the nomination.
     Now that Trump has dashed yet another of Jeb’s hopes, he’ll be the first Republican candidate to go into the general election without the endorsement of either former President Bush.
     You probably won’t hear many positive things out of Lindsey Graham either. Graham sees Trump as the end of his party, saying “Women and Hispanics hate his guts, and for good reason” and that “if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed... and we will deserve it.”
     Most importantly, there’s Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.
     Somewhere, in the darkest corner of Washington, John Boehner is studying dark magic and legal texts, trying to figure out how to make Paul Ryan the nominee. In the meantime though, the highest ranking Republican in office is trying very hard to keep his party together and tame Trump before divides in the party get worse. Ryan is withholding his endorsement until he’s convinced Trump will behave and play along with the party platform.
     Trump was quick to declare that he wasn’t ready to support the GOP platform and that the party was going to have to play along with him.
     This will not end well.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and thinks the return of the Whig Party is looking more likely by the day.

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