Self-sabotage seems to be in the Republican Establishment’s DNA. Even though the Republican Party has lost the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 presidential elections, nothing seems to wake these fools up. Access to the DC Trough is obviously much more important than the future of their own Party or country. They refuse to change. Refuse to adapt. Refuse to see the train bearing down on them. How else to explain the appalling behavior of the Establishment at Saturday night’s presidential debate?
We already know that the debate audience was stacked with donors and the like, people literally invested in anyone other than Donald Trump and Ted Cruz winning the Republican nomination. Regardless, at the very least, no matter how moneyed and bubbled, you would expect this group to put the health of the Party above all else. Instead, the behavior of this gilded crowd of entitled crybabies was the single most self-destructive act committed yet in this election cycle.
This group is so selfish and small and corrupted, so disinterested in beating Hillary Clinton, that on Saturday night they chose to make a clown show of a high-profile Party event — no less than a presidential debate.
Frustrated, angry, and under the bizarre delusion that robotically clapping like seals at every utterance from Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush would make them more palatable to voters, the GOP’s hand-picked audience did exactly that. And under this same delusion, for two full hours they booed and hissed at Donald Trump like ten year-olds watching a movie villain at a Saturday afternoon matinee.
In 2012, the Republican Party naively chose mainstream media debate moderators, and those moderators did everything they could to make the GOP look like a bumbling Party not ready for primetime. Well, who needs the DC Media to sabotage the GOP when Party itself can seed the debate audience with its own immature elites?
Saturday night’s debate was a disaster, a train wreck, the dropping of our own pants in front of the entire electorate, and not because of anything any of the candidates did or said. The behavior of the audience — those who endlessly reassure the GOP Base that they are the “grown-ups” — was a humiliating frat boy spectacle, a turn-off in the extreme, the work of children sending a message that the Grand Old Party can’t govern its own debates, much less a country.
Tactically, in their never-ending quest to destroy Trump, Saturday night’s audience also proved why they have lost 5 of 6: these people have absolutely no political skills.
In the previous GOP debate, Trump’s best moment came when the audience booed him. Because he’s a very skillful politician, in front of millions of television viewers made up primarily of voters who hate the Establishment, Trump brilliantly exposed his childish booers as the Party’s elite donors and insiders. And there was Trump, just before his New Hampshire triumph, one man against the Dreaded GOP Machine.
So what do these Exclusive Idiots do in the next round? What the GOP Establishment always does: double down on failure.
Saturday night was an entire night of Trump — the outnumbered, out-flanked, completely surrounded man alone — punching and counter-punching the very people GOP primary voters most want to see punched and counter-punched. What more could his brand possibly ask for?
Moreover, Trump is now able to credibly argue the RNC broke the pledge Trump and the RNC signed that promised him a level-playing field from the Party in exchange for his agreeing not to run as a third party candidate.
This is why we lose. This is why we lose even when we win both Houses of Congress. Selfish, bubbled, self-destructive morons hold the reins of our Party.
Saturday night only made the choice they are faced with all the more starker for Republican primary voters….
They can either allow these gilded lily-livers to destroy the Party through this kind of self-destructive behavior and the importing of millions of illegal Democrats…
Or they can burn it down and rebuild with a Cruz or Trump.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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