America may not know it, but it desperately needs a Republican in the White House on January 20, 2017, to right the ship of state nearly sunk by Barack Obama and his liberal progressive cohorts. But, does that mean anyone running under the Republican banner will work to to achieve the principles of the Republican Party? Apparently a sizable number of grassroots conservative Republicans consider a candidate's "authenticity" more important than, say, the historical conservative Republican principles of governance.
The proof of that statement is found in the number of grassroots folks who are adamant supporters of Donald Trump, despite the documented fact that he supports, or has supported, many substantial liberal positions in the past 15 years, that these very same grassroots conservative folks have historically opposed.
It just doesn't make sense to me for these grassroots conservative folks to turn their back on their core principles in order to send a political message to the GOP establishment in the form of someone who is clearly an authoritarian and aspiring despot, all because they view him as "authentic", whatever that means.
Looking back at 2012, the Republican establishment gave short shrift to the grassroots conservative element of the party, only to see that group of voters stay at home to send a message to the GOP establishment. In the end the message said that the grassroots were much more interested in their message, than electing a moderate to liberal Republican like Mitt Romney.
In 2010 conservatives, in the form of the Tea Party, did send a message to the Republicans in the congressional elections by electing a sizable number of conservatives to Congress to temper the actions of the moderate/liberal Republican leadership. But that was a congressional election and not a presidential election. The dynamics are completely different between the two events. Witness the results of the 2012 election for Republicans. Conservatives thought they could use the same 2010 congressional strategy in the presidential election and 2012 became a circular firing squad that killed the chances of getting rid of a far worse force in Barack Obama.
Remember, Obama won in 2012 with far fewer votes than he received in 2008. Had the grassroots conservatives of the GOP come out to vote for Mitt Romney, America would be looking at a Romney second term in the current presidential election cycle and not the cataclysmic political storm we see before us. Imagine what a Republican Congress could have achieved with a Republican president in the White House? We would be looking at Obamacare in the rearview mirror of history. The outrageous actions of the EPA and their hoard of global warming alarmists would be reversed. Much more would have been accomplished, even with the groveling likes of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, as they would not have had any excuses for their pathetic behavior.
Will 2016 see a similar kind of message to be sent by grassroots conservatives or will the GOP establishment send some kind of tangible statement to grassroots voters to bring the two disparate groups together to save America? One can only wonder, as both sides seem be entrenching themselves in positions that are potentially intractable and thus impossible to reverse, whether grassroots conservatives will sit this election out if they don't get their favored candidate nominated.
My hope is that Republican primary voters will make all of this speculation of conflict and messaging irrelevant in the end and will choose the best candidate, whoever that may be, that is capable of defeating the Democratic nominee. I don't completely trust any of the Republican candidates as much as I trust the sum total decision of Republican Party primary voters to make the best selection possible among the candidates running. But once those primary voters have spoken, it will behoove all Republican voters to show up on November 8, 2016, to cast their vote for the Republican candidate.
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