Rachel Maddow: GOP Embracing "The Fringe" - It's New, and Nuts

Image from source, Washington Post

I have a feeling that Reince Priebus must just be rocking himself to sleep every night, unsure of what to do. The Republican Party has fostered and built the Frankenstein's monster that is Donald Trump, and activated the torch-bearing villagers. The twist is, the villagers support the monster, and want to set his maker's laboratory ablaze! For years, they courted the paranoid, the conspiratorial, the frothingly xenophobic, the rabidly homophobic, the acidically racist and the overzealously religious. Those people were supposed to rush to the polls to vote for everyone with an (R) after their name. They weren't supposed to control anything, either by becoming the majority, or by aligning behind a non-establishment candidate.

They should have seen this coming. They have had to deal with (and pretend to just adore) the Tea Party. They've had several nutbars from the fringe actually get elected. They had to suspect that it was possible that eventually a non-establishment candidate would rise to the top as a presidential candidate. What they didn't factor in was a cult of personality, a hero-worship of a bona fide "conservative" celebrity. I have to note that I put conservative in quotes here, because one of the most curious parts of this whole thing is that Donald J. Trump does not align well with many of the core principles of modern day Tea Party conservatism. And I just as easily could have put "celebrity" in quotes, as Trump is the kind of celebrity that is famous for being famous. He's literally a Reality TV star, on par with a Kardashian.



Could Donald Trump have a
Lonesome Rhodes moment?
Image fromWikipedia.

So, no, the GOP couldn't have predicted that the base voters could put aside their hardcore anti-abortion stance, shunt aside their anti-gay feelings, ignore their religious fervor, and go all in for a famous bag of gas. And follow him no matter what. He's not Teflon like Ronald Reagan, he's something altogether different. He's akin to a cult leader, and his followers are guzzling the Flavor-Aid. The only way to stop this thing, to my mind, is for the GOP to expel him from the party, and in doing so, very likely fracture their party. Barring that, they have to hope for a coalescence of support for a candidate by the non-crazy GOP voters that swells larger than Trump's support. Or, they have to hope some event or happenstance takes him out of the running. It's not likely to be a gaffe that does it, unless it's of Lonesome Rhodes proportions.

[Excerpt]

A leading presidential candidate embracing the fringe? That’s nuts — and new.

In the three years since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., one of the more inexplicable aspects of its aftermath has been the persistence of the insane conspiracy theory that the killings never really happened. Sandy Hook “truthers” contend that the incident was either faked in its entirety, or, if it was real, was committed by the government for some sort of political effect. . .

Read more at: Washington Post