If Republicans had fought for their voters

As boldly and passionately as they have fought Donald Trump, we wouldn't have Donald Trump.  I'm not happy about Trump, make no mistake.  Trump is the GOP version of everything that progressivism has hoisted on our nation for the last half century or more.  In many ways, he epitomizes the worst of what we have become.

Nonetheless, most die hard Trump supporters I know don't hate the Democrats nearly as much as they hate the GOP establishment.  That's because they've watched for almost 30 years as the GOP seemed to fall back and surrender on almost every front that mattered.  They've even watched as some Republicans increasingly seemed to share the contempt and derision held for conservatives that is common among the Democratic establishment.

They watched election after election of being promised the sky and the stars, only to end up with table scraps, and that's if they were lucky.  They watched as time and again, when Republicans held the orb, scepter and crown, the Grand Old Party would almost hand the prizes over to the Democrats in order to get more face time on the news.  They watched loss after loss, betrayal after betrayal.  They watched a party that, for 30 years, seemed to almost apologize to the media for being anything other than Democrats.  In 2016, they had enough. 

Trump got to where he got in the primaries because of the media.  We all know that.  Why the press did it is up to interpretation.  I have my ideas.  But nobody denies that the press was crucial for Trump's nomination.  When he was nominated, the GOP did something that many Republican voters hadn't seen since the Reagan years.  It became passionate and committed.  Not to the Republican voters, of course, but in their fight against Trump.  For the first time in many memories, the GOP was fighting for a cause.

And that, children, is why we have Trump. Many have said that America needs to move past a two party system.  But the solution is not a one party system.  Through the 90s and in the post-9/11 years, as the GOP made it clear that keeping seats at the insider party was their primary motive, the GOP and the Democrats looked less and less different. 

So they turned to someone who would damage the GOP brand as much as possible.  Not that I'm glad.  I don't like Trump's kindergartner approach to discourse.  I didn't like it when the Democrats used the popular culture to do the same with their own good cop/bad cop.  When the Democrats let comedians, pundits, and bloggers go out to do worse than Trump ever said, and then yucked it up at parties and dinners for a job well done.  Nonetheless, I have to admit why Trump is there.  With all the various problems in the world, it's hard to miss that to some Republicans, the biggest problem was their own party.  And it was a problem they will be happy to see Trump fix.