GOP Post-mortem - Prager's view and Levinson's view #NeverTrump

I didn't think Trump would win. I figured at some point he would self-destruct. But it seemed with each "out there" comment, he gained more popularity. Meanwhile, his opponents got picked off one-by-one and were voted off the nomination island Survivor style.

Prayer offered these thoughts as to what happened.

Excerpt:

There are many reasons Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. The four most often cited reasons are the frustrations of white working-class Americans, a widespread revulsion against political correctness, disenchantment with the Republican “establishment,” and the unprecedented and unrivaled amount of time the media afforded Trump. They are all valid. But the biggest reason is this: The majority of Republicans are not conservative. [.........] Only America was founded on the idea of small government. But the Left is based on big government. America was founded on the principle that human rights come from the Creator. For the Left, rights come from the state. America was founded on the belief that in order to maintain a small government, a God-fearing people is necessary. The Left opposes God-based religions, particularly Judeo-Christian religions. Secularism is at the core of Leftism every bit as much as egalitarianism is. It took generations, but the Left has succeeded in substituting its values for America’s. [....] Those who do are called “conservatives” because they wish to conserve the unique American idea. But conservatives now constitute not only a minority of Americans, but a minority of Republicans. That is the primary reason Donald Trump -- a nationalist but not a conservative -- is the presumptive Republican nominee.

Am part of the #NeverTrump voter group and have nowhere to go so maybe not voting on the President or doing a protest vote. We shall see.

Here is some more post-mortem from Levinson.

Excerpt:

Some people involved in what came to be called the #NeverTrump movement lamented that their efforts to bloody the front-runner wouldn’t have been necessary if any of the other candidates had been willing to attack him themselves. Many laid the blame on Ted Cruz, calling him an unacceptable alternative to Trump. Cruz’s camp blamed John Kasich, saying the race would have unfolded differently if he’d dropped out and let Cruz go head to head with Trump. Others blamed the strategy of anti-Trump groups, saying it’s no help telling voters who to be against if you can’t tell them who they should be for. Several said the Republican National Committee should have stepped in and effectively excommunicated Trump from the party. And still others wondered whether Trump had ever been stoppable in the first place. [...........] The most consistent knock on the anti-Trump outside groups is that their efforts did not start early enough. [.....] The non-Trump contenders were all damaged by spending onslaughts, even as their chief antagonist largely proved impervious to outside spending on negative ads. Attacks from the super PAC backing Rubio damaged Chris Christie’s chances in New Hampshire. Spending by Right to Rise, the Super PAC backing Jeb Bush, kept Rubio’s poll numbers low leading up to the Iowa caucuses. But Right to Rise was a cautionary tale of the limited impact of paid attacks this cycle — the group spent over $100 million to help Bush, who dropped out after the South Carolina primary, having never placed higher than fourth place. And the attacks that truly damaged Rubio’s campaign were not backed by Right to Rise’s millions, but rather leveled at him in person: Christie’s attack on him as a robot at the New Hampshire debate, and Trump’s unflattering “Little Marco” moniker. [.......] Anti-Trump Republicans argued from the beginning that even if Trump was leading the polls, the fact that he was below 50 percent meant there were always more people against him than for him. But when the race began there were 16 people splitting that anti-Trump vote.