Call me a loser conservative, but
I thought he had a chance to attract young voters and realign the Republicans away from their war-party impulses and toward some semblance of fiscal sanity.
As a result, Paul was savaged early on by the
Back then the
He'd take attention away from candidates who threatened the establishment, and when it finally was time, the wise men would unleash Jeb! and his
It was a great plan except for one thing: reality.
And so it didn't happen, did it? Now they fear Trump.
I don't fear him --
He's charismatic and strenuously nonspecific, with a campaign built largely on messianic appeal. His core true believers really don't care what he says anymore. So in this, Trump is rather like the current president, only pinker, and with crazy hair and a lot more attitude and fewer establishment media pooches begging for his biscuits.
That said, I'm loving what Trump's been doing to the Republican political establishment.
Because if any collection of weasels deserved what's coming to them, it's this crew, for all the promises they've made to their conservative base, and all the times they've broken them so the big donors wouldn't be angry.
With each Trump victory, and each squeal and shriek from
A Renaissance-style painting of the
They lift their pasty hands -- generally reserved for lifting goblets and ordering slave girls to roll over -- and beg the leather-clad barbarian for mercy.
They make ready to clasp his knees. They hate him and that horse smell and leather and the barbaric hygiene. But they like being close to power. And if he continues winning, you'll see them cozy up. That's what establishment types do.
And I can't say I don't like what's happening, because they deserve it so.
The common wisdom is that if Trump continues on and wins the Republican nomination, he'll be trounced by Democrat
But I'm not so sure. Still, if you read the bleating op-eds, you get a sniff of the
What they don't say is that they'd rather have Democrat
But they haven't abandoned their dreams of a Trumpless ticket just yet. They think if only they can get
The pooh-bahs once yearned for a
What they've completely missed is that the American people are angrier than they've ever been, and with good reason. The party leaders thought they could herd that anger.
"They didn't see Trump as the vessel for all this anger,"
"They looked at Trump and thought ... there's no way Republicans, no matter how angry, would rally around this guy. You've heard the establishment types say that they don't know a single person who'd vote for
I offered my wacky theory: They thought they could use the barbarian to stop candidacies like Paul's.
"Little did they know they'd end up with a candidate (Trump) on a nationally televised stage who would say that
Trump's arguments about
The anger you see on the Republican side will hit the Democrats in the next election cycle. As much as I'd hoped, I think it's too early for that kind of revolt this year. The liberal media ripped on the
All those millennials feeling the bern for
But that's in the next cycle.
Now it's the time of Trump, the barbarian at the Republican establishment's gates.
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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.