Though Donald Trump may have the support of the party he leads in public, privately much of the GOP establishment has given up on winning the White House this time around.
Instead leading Republicans confess they are looking forward to taking on President Clinton in 2020 with a slightly less unhinged nominee more in keeping with their core values.
“The tragedy of 2016 is that we had so many candidates in the primary with just the right mix of discretion, misogyny, and hostility to immigrants. But Trump ruined everything with his despicable habit of telling everything like it is.”
Rule changes are already being worked on to prevent the party machinery being hijacked by the wrong kind of bigotry a second time.
“Respect to the Democrats for knowing how to ensure the party favorite always prevails.”
Although Trump’s misogyny was believed to be genuine, he was simply not considered convincing enough on many important social issues given the liberal positions he has professed in the past.
“One problem with Trump is that he campaigned on the promise that he would prosecute women for abortion, but no one really believed he would actually follow through on it.”
For 2020 they are determined to select a nominee who won’t campaign on the promise of prosecuting women who have abortions, but definitely will follow through on it.
But who? For decades, the GOP depended on the idea of “who’s next” to choose their nominee – it was always the man (never a woman) who had just been Vice-President, or had distinguished himself somehow (WW 2)……but now, with the Party in turmoil, and with its leaders mostly unpalatable to the American people at large, there is basically NOBODY to choose from. The party itself might have great difficulty settling on a 2020 candidate, as evidenced by the extra-large field this year, and the feeling by many that their “first-and-only-choice” was rejected by their own brethren.