rain surgeon and former Republican candidate Ben Carson had this to say about Donald
Trump the other day:
“The way I look at it, even if Donald Trump turns out not to be such a great president—which I don't think is the case, I think he's going to surround himself with really good people—but even if he didn't, we're only looking at four years.“
Translation: He doesn't suck too much, I guess, and anyway, it's only four years. That's as much of a ringing endorsement as our Republican leaders can muster. No wonder we keep losing.
One leading magazine (I'm not going to name them, least of all call them the establishment, because they're in a really mean mood right now—as the saying goes, never pick a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel or bandwidth by the gigabit) has come out with an even more underwhelming endorsement of Ted Cruz, now that their handpicked favorites—Bush, Rubio, Christie, Carson, Kasich, Santorum, Pataki, Graham, Jindal, Walker, Perry and Fiorina (all good men and women, by the way, but only one or the other—we are, after all, Republicans)—have fallen by the wayside.
Vials of Gloom
With defeat all but inevitable, they couched their endorsement in qualifiers by pointing out all the flaws that they saw in Cruz's approach. I can imagine Ted Cruz thinking: Gee, I'm their thirteenth choice. How lucky I am.
Let's not forget the RNC, which throws open the primaries to Democrats. Naturally the Democrats vote for the least conservative candidate, then go back to their cackling mother hen in the main election, leaving us with Trump.
If the nation's flagship conservative publication had backed the nation's most conservative guy enthusiastically from the beginning, maybe things would be different. Or maybe not. It's been suggested that it's all disinformation: they actually wanted Trump all along, but couldn't risk saying so. It's a masterpiece of reverse psychology.
Some of the other criticisms of Trump on the right, such as Redstate's disinvitation of Trump over his remarks about Megyn Kelly, seemed to confirm that some of our most respected institutions are falling prey to the same political correctness that we complain so much about on college campuses.
Negative campaigning doesn't work unless your supporters are fanatical, which is why the Democrats do it and it's why Trump can do it. For normal people, the eleventh commandment still holds.
The gloom is so thick you could bottle it. David French at NRO urges Republicans to keep fighting for Ted Cruz, no matter how awful he is. Welcome to the party, fellas. Sorry the horse doovers have almost all been eaten and punch bowl is almost empty. “Stand now. No matter the odds.” he writes. “There is no other choice.” Yet they can barely bring themselves to say his name.
