Blogging : Page 328 : The Other McCain

Because I’ve been up to my ears in radical feminism for the past year, I haven’t monitored the day-to-day developments of the GOP presidential primary campaign the way I did during the 2012 cycle. As a result, I am unaware (and really, do not care) which of my blogger friends are supporting which candidate. My attitude for the 2016 campaign can be summarized in three words: Anybody But Clinton. After my (ultimately futile) hyper-involvement in the 2012 campaign, I simply do not want to expend mental or emotional energy worrying about who the Republicans nominate. Others do not have that attitude, however, which brings us to Ace of Spades discussing the latest Donald Trump controversy:

Laura Ingraham: GOP will rip itself apart at convention to avoid nominating Trump.
Krauthammer: Trump’s proposal is “deeply bigoted,” “indefensible.”
Josh Earnest: Trump’s proposal consigns him for the new and improved “Wrong side of history,” which is now “the dustbin of history.” . . .
Ingraham points out that Trump’s proposal comes in a particular context: When the establishments of both parties already want to take him out, and are willing to seize on whatever cudgel is at hand to do so.
They’re not going to beat him this way.
The establishment’s yelling about everything has gone from tedious to exhausting to infuriating.

Read the whole thing. I had noticed, occasionally, Ace’s increasing frustration with the GOP establishment the past year or so, but I guess I underestimated the intensity of his frustration, or his seriousness about the immigration problem. Knowing Ace, he’s the last guy I would expect to dive off into Pat Buchanan/Peter Brimelow/John Derbyshire paleoconservative-style populism which I’m not saying he has, but I think he definitely now understands the teeth-grinding fury the Old Right felt toward the GOP’s constant compromising with liberalism. Insofar as any conservative is serious about defeating the Left, I think, he must eventually experience that kind of reaction. The alternative is to become an unprincipled centrist hack like Steve Schmidt or Nicolle Wallace.

Honestly, I’ve got a Zen-like serenity about the Trump phenomenon. The prospect of Trump going thermonuclear and running as an independent is the worst-case scenario, and so what? He will do it or he won’t. Republicans who want to stop Trump from winning the GOP nomination have to reckon with that possibility, and let them worry about it.

Not my problem.

If Ace is saying “burn it down,” there may be no alternative. It is not Trump’s fault that the GOP establishment is impotent. It’s not Ace’s fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not your fault. That arrogant fat-faced bastard Karl Rove? Yeah, I’m willing to blame it all on him, because why not? Populism needs a scapegoat and he’ll do. So if everything goes sideways between now and November 2016, and Hillary Clinton is elected because Trump went third-party and got 34% of the vote . . . ?

Burn it down, I say, and blame it all on Karl.