Yes, this. I think there have been cases of pressure put on the delegate selection process in those additional levels.
What they’re terrified of is the prospect that the rubes and wingnuts have a death grip on the nomination process and will not accept anyone who can get the needed non-Rubewingnutistan votes in the general election.
Trump is not a conservative period, not even in the category of “not conservative enough”. Why do you think moderate Republicans are going for him? The conservatives are mainly for Cruz.
Ben Carson doesn’t agree with Romney. Carson makes a good point that it isn’t a good idea to reject the voters that support Trump. To imply they were conned (Romney’s word) also implies they are stupid too. Thats just not a good idea to attack your own party’s base.
I don’t like Trump, but he has won these primaries fairly. Sure, he’s made promises he can’t keep, but so do other candidates.
There is another possibility. I will be voting for the democratic candidate in November no matter what so my vote in the primary would be between B+ vs A- Since my vote wouldn’t really matter I would consider crossing over and voting for Trump.
The longer Trump stays the front runner ( but doesn’t win outright ) I’m seeing a party spending their resources fighting my battle for me and more importantly not focusing on messages that could resonate with the moderates is a good thing.
Finally, I really am enjoying the conversation. It doesn’t look like they will win in November but there are 4 guys who are not alike vying to be the face of the party. Which way does the party want to present going forward is huge and if the guy they pick wins in November well, the country has spoken about what kind of country it wants to be. That’s democracy. Entertaining and informative times indeed.
So, all of that to say I wouldn’t discount the crossover vote that Mr Trump has been getting so far. I think quite a bit of political trolling may be taking place.
I have been advocating just that very kind of trolling on this board.
The New York Times interviewed prominent historians, who struggled to find a historical parallel to the Romney speech. I told you guys it was a big deal:
This right here would have been the greatest Frank Capra film of all time.
I’m starting to suspect the turnout thing is about Trump – he makes people vote, whether for him or against him. I think this is likely to translate to the general election, too – he will inspire people to vote, both for him and against him, and I think it’s likely that there are not a majority of voters who will be for him.
So the Republican primary has had higher turnout because of Trump – both for him and against him… and if he becomes the nominee, the general will have higher turnout because of him as well, both for him and against him.
Nice wishful thinking there.
It could also be that Democratic turnout continues to be as unremarkable as it has been in the primary season.
It could be wishful thinking – we’ll see, if Trump is the nominee.
That’s also true, but it’s not really all that different from what I said. The fundamental problem is the extent to which these rubes and wingnuts make up a significant portion of the Republican base. The GOP establishment is indeed worried that said wingnuts are propelling an unelectable idiot to the nomination. They are also worried about what I mentioned – I used the phrase “what it says about their party and its base” but I should have said, more accurately, what Trump’s demagoguery exposes about their true beliefs. Both problems have the same root cause.
I’m not buying it. The same folks who whined that McCain and Romney weren’t conservative enough are enthusiastically endorsing Trump? The truth is that Trump doesn’t even have an identifiable or consistent ideology at all, he’s a self-serving opportunist who is currently riding a big wave of popularity based on a few carefully selected hot-button issues. However, his extremist positions on those issues are well aligned with the far right. Case in point: I don’t find it plausible that white supremacists would endorse anyone they regarded as a “moderate”.
What? A wall between US and Mexico isn’t moderate? 
The freepers are, I think, slightly for Trump over Cruz. Both have a lot of support there, and the Trump supporters are louder.
And freepers were definitely the crowd arguing that McCain and Romney just weren’t conservative enough. They blame the establishment for those candidates, for Boehner and McConnell, for Obama and Sotomayor and Kagan, for Obamacare and Planned Parenthood. And so they’ve decided to cripple the establishment. It’s ideological at its core, but the means aren’t ideological.
The people saying “not conservative enough” or “not conservative at all” about Trump are not saying it because his positions are not crazy enough like with Romney and McCain, they are saying it because they think he is lying. Redstate would love a candidate who embraced the same positions as Trump, as long as they believed he was for real.
Yet McCain has gone on record saying he’s would support Trump if he won the nomination.
Party before country? You don’t say.
Just one spud’s opinion, here, but this in part addresses why the Republican establishment seems to be totally missing what Trump’s success in the primaries is about. The contest seems far less about whether one candidate is conservative enough or not, and more about a significant bloc of voters wishing for a third-world style Strongman government. You know, because he’ll “get things done”, or make the trains run on time, or whatever.
I do think that those are factors on why several powerful Republicans are opposing Trump. I do think that another factor is also at play:
A loud message from the corporate side of the Republicans (Romney is after all a multi millionaire) that this has gone long enough and that the corporate media can and should take on Trump as powerful members of that group have given them permission.
Sure this can be turned around by Trump supporters as one of the reasons why guys like Romney are the establishment and should be combated now, but the corporate world does know that a loose cannon like Trump (that would start trade wars just because) is not what they need these days.
Not really. The whole primary season was the GOP elevating someone as the “true Conservative” only to have them drop back when they proved to be unelectable.
By the time the convention occurred, it was Romney.
You might be mistaking the words of a few Ron Paul idiots about taking over the delegates and other nonsense but like Ron Paul himself, they were easy to dismiss.
Put that way, I agree. Your earlier phrasing makes it sound like the GOP leadership is sorry for what it did (stoked and exploited anti-intellectualism, bigotry, and jingoism). All I’m seeing is regret that they got caught (i.e. Trump’s use of a bullhorn instead of a dogwhistle is peeling away their veneer of respectability).
All god points but its just too late at this point. Trump is going to be in the general. If he wins the nomination he will run no matter what and the other candidates can either stick by their pledge to support the winner or they can split off and install a Democrat in the white house for a generation (which is really the only way that someone like Bernie wins). If he doesn’t win the nomination, he will call foul play and run as an independent anyway.