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I would argue that with 17 candidates, it's extremely difficult to win a majority, but when the candidates dropped-out Mr. Trump did indeed pull majority votes.
You do make some some technical points (ex: Dem strategic cross-over), but I believe these points are so small in nature as to be relatively inconsequential.
Now what I will say to slightly ameliorate my own position, is: The GOP establishment and politicos fostered an environment where subsets of their voters were encouraged, or at least accepted, to believe all sorts of outlandish claims. Whether Birther, or death panels, or Kenyan citizenship, or etc., - the GOP tacitly (or wholeheartedly) agreed and embraced these aberrant trains of thought, all for political expediency.
Who in the GOP was calling-out Trump, when he claimed Obama wasn't born here and was lacking a birth certificate? We know that answer.
So by laying that foundation, I see the GOP laying the seeds for the revolution that just occurred. Without those years of inadvertent preparation, this would not have happened (at least not now, in this manner). It's not a qualitative jump at all from: 'Presidents lacking citizenship' --> to 'American judges with immigrant heritage being unqualified to preside'. This is really scary stuff. I hope we don't disallow judges with Polish or Italian ancestry, 'cuz then I and my family are off limits to the bench it would seem!
Fair enough, although I strongly disagree. In my view, the Republican establishment on a regular basis called out those who claimed to be Republicans or conservatives or Tea Party types who made outlandish claims about Obama or about any number of issues. The Republican Party leadership has been inundated with fringe fools who glommed onto them for lack of any other vehicle to spew their nonsense. It is why the Republican Party leadership took the 2014 mid-term nomination process into their own hands and actively promoted candidates who could win contentious elections instead of the Tea Party types and others who made winnable elections contentious and cost the party the Senate in both 2010 and 2012. As a result, the Republicans took the Senate in 2014. The Republican Party establishment did not foster or promote the idiocy - they actively fought against it.
But the GOP establishment was no match for a media that latched onto Trump and made him the entire primary story for the past year. There was zero the party could do, short of somehow disqualifying him from running for the nomination, that would have overcome the media's self-serving fixation on Trump 24/7. Trump could just as easily have sought the Democrat nomination and caused the same level of disruption there but the media would likely have marginalized him in favour of their choice, Hillary Clinton. The media's candidate is Hillary Clinton and focusing on Trump 24/7 took all the pressure and focus of Clinton and allowed her to secure the Democrat nomination while they pimped for Trump. Now that both nominations are settled, they will pimp against Trump, for Clinton, from now until November - it's already started.
So I totally reject the suggestion that the Republican establishment fostered or supported the birther movement, the Kenyan stuff, the death panels, etc. They did no such thing.
But they are stuck with a candidate that is not representative of the Republican Party or the average Republican member or voter. They do need to do something about ensuring that never happens again.
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