2016 March 2^nd

Super Tuesday has passed and Wednesday gives us a clearer vision of what was inevitable even before Tuesday’s votes. The national election in November will be between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will lose…unless the Republicans can be more successful at denying voting rights to non-whites. This is view is not mine alone; many, many, well positioned pundits take this position.

This morning Mona Charen, in her column, “GOP race turning into frontal assault vs. Trump,” excoriates the Republican establishment for allowing the rise of Trump. She says, “If ever there were a moment for a Republican establishment—a powerful cabal of donors, office holders and power brokers—to intervene, this would be it. Because if Trump is the nominee it spells the end of the party…” Then she reconsiders later saying that the “Republican establishment is itself mostly a shell and besides money doesn’t buy elections (see Bush, Jeb) and there is no one behind the curtain.” Now that’s a gloomy Republican! But then it will take considerable looking to find a happy column from Mona Charen.

Charen aims most of her never-ending venom at candidates from her own party. Cruz convinced his followers to “destroy the Washington cartel and boy did they ever listen.” So who does she like? Like is too strong, she claims that “Rubio is the most viable non-Trump candidate left.”  I watched Rubio give a performance last night before the Minnesota results showed he had at least won something on Tuesday. He yelled at length about what he would do on his “first day in office.” (The phrase “first day in office” is political speak for “Immediately,” or “very quickly.”) He would cancel all of the President’s executive actions. He would withdraw from the Iran Agreement. He would cancel, revoke, or otherwise eliminate, the Affordable Care Act. These assertions are absurd on their face:  For examples if he opts out of the Iran treaty there are still five other nations, and Iran, involved. Rubio needs to spend more time thinking about how he will manage to get to his first day in office rather than crow in advance about what he will do if he gets there.

Charen then goes on to outline Trump’s many shortcomings, these are shortcomings that she apparently believes haven’t received sufficient emphasis. But you know what these are, there is no point in listing them here, nor was there any point in Mona listing them, except perhaps doing so allowed her to vent and perhaps feel she had accomplished something. It is surprising that Mona Charen cannot recognize that Donald Trump’s very many warts, which she efficiently catalogues in her column, matter not a damn to his supporters.