Uh, no. The Republicans Party fought tooth and nail to keep Trump from winning the nomination with leaders in the Republican Party refusing to endorse him at the convention itself. So JMR was correct -- they never wanted him to be the nominee in the first place.
I wouldn't go that far. During the primary, the party infrastructure wanted to ignore him, perhaps appease him because of the attention he brought to their race. He wasn't expected to win. But because you had a 12 man and woman primary, no one could gain a reasonable foothold and Trump sucked the air out of every single debate with, let's be frank, inane bullshit. By the time people figured out he stood a chance to get the nomination, it was down to a few people. While most of the party apparatus was somewhat quietly nervous about Trump winning the nomination, they weren't exactly freaking out publicly, because, well, the base of the Republican Party was Donald Trump and Ted Cruz's brand of populism. Early on the primary, a stunning poll came out that, like, 54% of the Republican primary electorate was going to vote for one of the three people who had no political or government administrative service experience (Trump, Carson, and Fiorina). That was when I knew that something was up and I may end up having to vote for a Democrat. At that time, Clinton was like my 14th-ranked candidate choice, and my Democratic picks were tossed out within a couple debates (Webb, Chaffee). By the time the convention came up, the party folded and didn't bother to exercise the power they had, namely, the ability to deny Trump the nomination. It was a rally toward the flag moment, where Ted Cruz got scolded by his donors for making a half-hearted plea to "vote your conscience" (he couldn't even bring himself to say what that meant). And, so, the Republican Party got beat down by its own spinelessness in a few short months.
It only briefly came back with the Access Hollywood tape, and even then, you had people like Jason Chaffetz turn into a pretzel with his weekly "will I or won't I endorse/vote for Trump?" routine. And then Ted Cruz, you know, after all that protestation, bent the knee, because, after all, Ted and Donald were largely the same people with the same voters.
