What you see is what you get: Donald Trump is NOT going to change



For months now, we've been hearing that at some point Donald Trump was going to "pivot-" to stop acting like a really nasty pre-teen whose favorite sport is pulling the wings off flies and start acting like someone a reasonable person could actually envision as President of the Untied States.

It isn't going to happen. A leopard can't change his spots, and Donald Trump can't stop being Donald Trump. What you see is what you get. The candidate a relatively small group of evil and sick people and a much larger group of angry and gullible ones foisted upon the Republican party as its nominee this year is what he is what he is. He's not going to change.

Trump is headed for electoral disaster this Fall, and if it's not very, very careful the Republican party is going to follow him. The ideal solution now that it's becoming obvious even to his own staff that Trump is not going to "clean up" into a respectable nominee- that the boorish jackass you see is what he is down to the core, and he can't even pretend to be anything else- the thought of dumping Trump as the nominee is becoming harder and harder to contemplate. Alas, there is no mechanism in the rules of the Republican party for doing that. The counter-revolution will have to wait until after the election to begin. It will be a slow process, probably achieving its first meaningful progress in 2018 and not completing itself until a candidate as unlike Trump is possible is nominated at the 2020 convention. In the meantime, Hillary Clinton will be elected; that became unavoidable the moment Trump clinched the Republican nomination. If the nation is lucky, the Republicans will retain control of the Senate and use it to defeat any and all nominees she puts forward for the Supreme Court. What the nation will think of that- whether it will even tolerate it- remains to be seen. My guess is that it won't be pretty.

But Republicans brought this on themselves. They should have united behind a single rational candidate while there was still a chance to stop Trump. Arguably much of the anger which Trump exploited had its origin in their less-than-aggressive opposition to Barack Obama and his policies in the last eight years. And when push came to shove, a great many people who should have known better let their anger get the better of their judgement. And now it's too late.

Donald Trump is not going to "pivot." This is what the Republican party chose; now it's stuck with it, and with the inevitable and very predictable consequences.

All that remains is to hunker down, save the Senate and as much of the ticket down-ballot as is possible, accept the inevitability of suffering through another four years of a crazy Left president despite the galling knowledge that the experience could easily have been prevented with only a moderate vaccination of common sense and a little guts, and begin the process of re-taking the Republican party from the barbarians.

It's going to be an ugly four years. That can no longer be prevented. But the only thing for it is to swallow our regrets, accept what can't be changed, and salvage a future that doesn't have to be this way come 2020 and beyond.

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