As The FT reports, many mainstream Republicans believe Mr Trump would struggle to beat Hillary Clinton and are urgently rallying around their man Rubio with some senior Republicans saying privately that they mightconsider voting for Mrs Clinton if Mr Trump were to end up as their party nominee as one conservative commentator exclaimed “we are on the verge of a real meltdown in the Republican party.”
As The FT reports, while Mr Rubio and Mr Trump ramp up their attacks on each other ahead of the March 1 primaries, Republican grandees and lawmakers are turning to the Florida senator as they become increasingly worried that the property tycoon could lock up the GOP presidential nomination within three weeks.
They fear that a victory for Mr Trump could fatally fracture the party and prevent them from winning the White House in November.
Many mainstream Republicans believe Mr Trump would struggle to beat Hillary Clinton, the clear Democratic frontrunner after her resounding victory over Bernie Sanders in South Carolina on Saturday, given the comments he has made about Hispanics, Muslims, women, disabled people and people who have criticised his campaign.
But, as the following chart shows, it’s far too close to call…
Confidential polling data shows Hillary Clinton could lose the presidential election in heavily Democratic New York to Donald Trump as the GOP front-runner’s support grows to the point of being “surprisingly strong,”
As panic is setting in within The GOP…
“We are on the verge of a real meltdown in the Republican party,” Hugh Hewitt, the influential conservative radio talk-show host told ABC television on Sunday.Some senior Republicans have said privately that they might consider voting for Mrs Clinton if Mr Trump were to end up as their party nominee.“You’ll see a lot of Republicans do that,” Christine Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who previously compared Mr Trump to Hitler, told the New Jersey Star-Ledger.
“We don’t want to. But I know I won’t vote for Trump.”
But none other than Rupert Murdoch chimed in at the craziness and infighting…
Both "establishment" Republicans and Trump need to cool it and close ranks to fight real enemy. Trump, Rubio, Kasich could all win general.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) February 28, 2016
Donald Trump’s runaway success in the GOP primaries so far is setting off alarm bells among neoconservatives who are worried he will not pursue the same bellicose foreign policy that has dominated Republican thinking for decades.
Neoconservative historian Robert Kagan — one of the prime intellectual backers of the Iraq war and an advocate for Syrian intervention — announced in the Washington Post last week that if Trump secures the nomination “the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
Currently popular fad of self-styled conservative intellectuals declaring that they will never vote for Trump, even if he is the nominee, and even if it means Hillary Clinton becomes president. If the thinking here is that Trump is so far beyond-the-pale unacceptable that we must bite the bullet and support a Democrat this time around – lest we subject the nation to the horrors of Trump – I would like to remind you of something important:
Whatever Trump’s faults, Hillary Clinton is far worse in every conceivable way.
What Hillary does is out-and-out break the law, whether that means putting national security secrets at risk or wiping her e-mail server of content that should have been archived and preserved. And that’s just the start. Let’s not forget Whitewater. Let’s not forget Cattlegate. Let’s now forget the Rose Law Firm billing records. She may yet be indicted for the e-mail thing, but even if she skates everyone knows it will be because Loretta Lynch caved to politics over evidence.
Hillary Clinton is one of the most dispicable characters to appear on the American political scene in the history of this nation. Yet it’s perfectly fine for Democrats to vote for her, but Republicans must abandon their own party on account of Donald Trump?
I do not think so.
By the way, if you want to get into matters of public policy, consider: Let’s say that in the next administration, Paul Ryan leads the Republican House in developing legislation that would a) repeal ObamaCare, b) replace the tax code; and c) open up the development of domestic energy resources on federal lands while relaxing regulation of it on private lands? Just those three things. Forget about everything else. Ryan gets this through the House and somehow drags a nervous and reluctant Mitch McConnell to shepherd them through the Senate too.
What happens under President Trump? Now, what happens under President Hillary?
Neither scenario may be perfect to a conservative’s liking, but which one has a more positive outcome? You know perfectly well which.
So all you conservatives who are preening for your fellow conservatives about how you, too, are far too pure and virtuous to ever vote for Donald Trump can take your high-and-mighty pronouncements and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Yes, I have very big problems with Donald Trump too. He is far from my ideal Republican nominee. But if you’re so caught up in your Trump indignation that you’ve lost sight of just how horrendous a human being Hillary Cliinton is, then you are not really a serious person at all, and you just might understand the governance of this nation even less than you think Donald Trump does.
Trump is not my choice to be the guy tasked with keeping Hillary out of the White House. But that remains the task. If you’re ready to abandon that task and let this horrible woman become president, then you’re not on the same team as me, that’s for damn sure.
