Morning After Thoughts (2/24/16)

Since only GOP caucused last night, today’s morning after thoughts will be half as long.

1. Donald J. Trump, a megalomaniac, racist, xenophobic, sexist, braggart, blowhard and buffoon is going to be the presidential nominee of the Republican Party (technically, the very same party as Lincoln). He has won across the country.

2. There are really only 2 ways this doesn’t happen: (a) long shot candidate Marco Rubio picks up more than a handful of states on Super Tuesday to break the momentum/inevitability of Trump or (b) some combination of the remaining candidates cobble together enough wins — or limit Trump’s victory size — to gain enough delegates to force a brokered convention. I don’t see a united anti-Trump campaign/super PAC getting job done at this point.

3. Republicans have only themselves to blame. How else does a “populist billionaire” (think about that term) who really is a “conservative of convenience” destroy the party? Maybe Mike Murphy has been getting paid by Donnie T all along…like one of my favorite Bill Clinton sayings: “If you see a turtle sitting on top of a fence post, it didn’t get there by accident.”

4. Perhaps the only upside to the utterly bizarre campaign season has been watching republican writers/strategists/voters go through the 5 stages of grief to accept a Trump nomination. I’m really curious how the Nat’l Review, Weekly Standard, etc will respond now.

5. Increasingly less likely someone like Bloomberg runs. The votes he picks up will come almost equally from disaffected Republicans who won’t vote for Trump and democrats looking for ABH (anybody but Hillary) and in that scenario, Donald Trump is the 45th POTUS. That’s not to say that we don’t end up seeing Romney 3.0. But this lunacy of a three-way race leading to no one candidate getting 270 electoral votes and having the House of Representatives decide is just that…lunacy.