Matthew Continetti:
The Darwin Awards is a popular website that “commemorates individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species’ chances of long-term survival.” I’d like to nominate a certain political party for one. It should win hands down.
The competition is tough. “All human races, cultures, and socioeconomic groups are eligible,” according to the contest rules. Though these rules do not specifically mention political institutions, the Republican Party, founded in 1854, meets the criteria for entry. No doubt about it.
Its story is true—as much a part of our reality as the sky and the stars. The voters that make up the party are, as the rules stipulate, “capable of sound judgment.” By supporting the least qualified, least knowledgeable, most unsuited major-party nominee for president in history, they are engaged in an “astounding misapplication of judgment.” Every week that Donald Trump remains the Republican nominee, the party comes closer to removing itself from the presidential gene pool. Self-selection is at work here. Trump’s supporters are choosing their party’s demise.
Want proof? Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University, built a model that has correctly predicted presidential elections since 1992. The model says the GOP is set to win the presidency this year, 51 percent to 49 percent. But Abramowitz says to ignore his findings, not because they are wrong but because they describe an election that is not actually taking place. “The model is based on the assumption that the parties are going to nominate mainstream candidates who will be able to unite the party, and that the outcome will be similar to a generic vote, a generic presidential vote for a generic Democratic versus a generic Republican.”
Translation: If Republican voters had nominated a typical candidate, a governor or former governor who had won office in a big state by straddling the center and the right, that man would be ahead of Hillary Clinton right now. But instead the voters went for Trump, who has never run for nor held office, dodged the draft, and spent the last year insulting Mexicans, P.O.W.s, women, the disabled, Muslims, you name it, while saying George W. Bush lied us into war with Iraq and implying Ted Cruz’s dad had a hand in the Kennedy assassination. Then there was the part where he bragged about his genitals before ranting that he would order soldiers to commit war crimes and “If I say do it, they’re going to do it.” This week he cast the troops in Iraq as thieves, threw his support behind an unconstitutional proposal to deny Second Amendment rights to citizens on the no fly list, invited Kim Jong Un to Washington, hinted that President Obama supported ISIS, denied press credentials to the Washington Post after the paper reported this insinuation, and then turned around and tweeted that a Breitbart.com article proved he was right about Obama all along.
This is not a good man. This is not a stable man. It is in the self-interest of no rational person to have him near the situation room. So it does not come as a surprise to see support for Donald Trump collapsing in the Real Clear Politics poll average. Hillary Clinton now leads him by about six points. His unfavorable rating in the ABC News / Washington Post poll is up to 70 percent, a record high. The election isn’t until November 8. Where will Trump’s unfavorable rating be then? 85 percent? 90? He’ll make the record books all right—as the most reviled nominee in U.S. history.
A majority of voters told CBS that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency. An analysis of 11 battleground states conducted by Politico has Clinton winning 8 of them. The GOP as a whole has a favorable rating of only 32 percent, the lowest number since Bloomberg started polling in 2009. Maryland governor Larry Hogan, one of the most popular officials in the country, said he would not vote for the nominee of his party. The Reuters poll has the Democrats leading the Republicans in the congressional generic ballot by 11 points. In recent days Trump has hired a pollster for indigo-blue New York and traveled to Georgia, Texas, and Arizona, even though Ohio, Virginia, and Florida will decide the election. Next week Trump plans to travel to Scotland—not to meet with foreign dignitaries but to reopen one of his golf resorts. He knows nothing, has done nothing but promote himself for 30 years, and deserves nothing. And he’s not going to change. Seventy year olds do not change.
Four years ago I wrote that the summer of an election year is when campaigns define their opponents. In 2012, Barack Obama’s campaign transformed Mitt Romney from a mild-mannered technocrat into a soulless tool of capital. On Thursday Clinton began her television campaign against Trump, spending millions of dollars in swing states that will define the New York real estate developer as a risk to the nation’s economy and security, a misogynist and bigot, an ignoramus and doofus. She won’t be wrong.
The reblicans need to stick up to whats right for america and its citizens and not tow the line for the leftists and Obama
got to love polls and the democratic control of the media. most polls have no demographics and the money laundering bloomberg company is a dirty lying business. the press hide the ex-mayors sorted affairs, just like they had to hide Jeb’s mistress before he ran for the second term in FL.
Had the disassociated establishment leaders not left the values of the base in favor of the globalism dream of the elite class, the GOP would not be in the position it is now.
@Ditto:
And those “disassociated establishment leaders” have been elected by the voters of their states how many times.
A thief is going to steal, a liar is going to lie and a con-man is going to con. Letting them continue to do so is whose fault?
@retire05:
In every primary since Reagan, I have been voting against establishment-globalist Republicans and for Constitutional conservatives. Unfortunately, my state has been inundated and taken over by former Californians who proudly wear the badge of “progressive”.