Donald Trump: The Monster is loose.

I probably won't be saying anything I haven't already said tonight, but he is on my mind for a couple reasons.
I've had a couple days to absorb the debate and its aftermath, and to reexamine my knee jerk reaction that Trump pretty much won, my thoughts, and the few polls I have seen so far, are in agreement, he pretty much annihilated the competition and I don't see how he doesn't get the nomination if he keeps up this way.
And that is the GOP leaderships worst nightmare.

For over thirty years now, the Republican party has been marching in lockstep to the beat of their leaderships drum, they hold the same views and pander to the same base, this was expressed pretty clearly Thursday when the debaters desperately tried to distinguish themselves from each other, but couldn't, each one in turn talked about how they had cut government, knocked people off wellfare rolls, beat the teachers unions, and defunded Planned Parenthood. Also that they would punish immigrants in various ways.

The GOP has invented itself as the party of hatred, they hate minorities, they hate women, they hate education, literally, you only have to look at any of the policies they have pushed in the last couple decades to see that, many instituted for no other reason than to punish those they don't like for existing.

Of course, you can't come out and say that in so many words, that is still political suicide in this country, which is why debates and speeches (from anyone) rarely just come out and state a position in plain language, the party has a problem though, they have spent a couple generation telling the American people that politicians are not to be trusted in part because of the very language they have to use to disguise their message for the general population.

They have trained their base to look for a plain-spoken outsider who isn't interested in political correctness, and who will say exactly what he thinks on any topic and never apologize for anything.

Enter Donald Trump, a monster created by the very policies the party has pushed for, he wen on stage on Thursday and said everything the base wants to hear, and he said a couple things that were true, particularly when asked about him donating to Hillary Clinton in previous years, he said, and I am paraphrasing, "I donate to everybody, because when I donate, I expect to get favors, and I do" He went on to say that everyone on the stage, except for him, is beholden to donors in the same way.

This is the stage that included Scott Walker, who may as well have "property of the Koch Bros" stamped on his head, and JEB, who really would have to try hard to find more businesses to be in the pockets of, and moderated by Fox News, basically the propaganda arm of the Republican party.
He was absolutely right, and the base ate it up.

Electing Trump will destroy the GOP in the form we know it, because even if he gets the nomination in a landslide, there is basically no other person out there who would inspire his opponents to campaign against him more, his campaign will go down in a glorious fireball of personal attacks, racism, and misogyny. And the Democratic candidate would have to literally eat an aborted baby on live TV to be seen as a worse choice. And don't get me wrong, for all I have seemed to praise the man, President Trump would be one of the worst possible outcomes for the election we could ever imagine, the man is insane and we would be lucky if he doesn't start a nuclear war with Russia.

The GOP leadership sees this, and if you watch or read the commentary coming out of their outlets, or even if you looked at the questions in the debate, they are attempting to sink his campaign by any means necessary. Financiers are disinviting him from fundraisers, attacks are raised against him from his own side that they would never contemplate doing with anyone else, and media outlets are running hit pieces on him that look very similar to the ones run by supposedly liberal publications.

And non of it is working, he gets to play the outsider, keep saying awful, awful things on Twitter and in interviews, and keeps generating support, they can't attack him on his horrible views, most of them are held by all their other candidates but even so, he doesn't bother to deny, he simply owns it and asks "what are you gonna do about it?" The GOP voting base, stupid and easily lead as they are, eat it up and just keep trucking along.

He has threatened to run as a third party if he doesn't get the nomination, and I believe he will, I don't see him not getting it unless the party changes the rules to exclude him somehow, but he will run anyway, and that will split the extremist votes, the extremists are practically the only people who vote Republican these days, they are the most motivated to get out and do it, and with their support split between two people (Probably Bush, though Cruz might get the nod) they will lose the election in a landslide not seen in half a century or more.
The party has created a monster, and he has broken out of the lab and only now are they finding out they made him bulletproof.

This next year and a half is going to be a wild ride, and election day 2016 can't come soon enough.