For Some Republicans and Most Conservatives, Desperation

[MineralMan]

is the key to their behavior in the 2016 presidential campaign. Having failed to choose a sane person as the party's nominee, they are seeing the end to their legacy looming large on the horizon. They could not push through a reasonable candidate during the chaotic primary period, and have ended up with a massively flawed nominee who does not even support their goals. He is a loose cannon, sliding back and forth across the deck of the ship of state, threatening to bring down the flimsy edifice the GOP has created through deception and greed.

Some Republican elected officials are running as fast as they can from offering any real support for Trump. Others are reaching into their back pockets and finding their campaign wallets thinner than ever and are trying as hard as they can to show some support for their party's candidate. They're trying desperately to save their own offices from being taken over by Democrats.

With a total of zero major newspapers endorsing Trump, the presidential race is clearly over for Trump, leaving other Republicans to wonder what will become of them. Every segment of the GOP is frantically trying to find some way to salvage something from the disaster. The Bible-banging religious right sees who Donald Trump is and has great difficulty standing behind him. The Economic conservatives clearly understand that Trump, a failure in business, will bring economic ruin.

Republicans are faced with a desperate situation. They cannot support Hillary Clinton or they will lose support from the wacko nutcase far right base. The cannot truly support Trump, because even they know he would be an falling anchor pulling them all down. So, they are mostly silent. They know the presidency is lost, and can only hope to survive by staying out of presidential politics as far as possible and hoping that their constituencies will not bail on the election altogether.

The GOP is the Desperation Party in 2016. It's a wonderful thing to observe.

[BSdetect]

1. They have brought it down on themselves.

I could never ever have voted for them anyway but their behaviour towards Obama alone will cement them firmly in the dustbin of deplorables.

They are detestable and despicable.

[MineralMan]

2. We're Democrats. We don't vote for Republicans.

They know that. However, they're at a loss to come up with a reason to vote for Trump. There are no such reasons.

[ibegurpard]

3. They control the majority of governorships

Both houses of Congress and the majority of state legislatures... yeah they're doing just awful.
It's time people stopped putting all their eggs in the presidential basket and started paying attention to the downticket races where the real power lies. Hopefully 2018 will not be another wakeup call.

[BobbyDrake]

4. After 2012, the GOP was advised, "When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging." They didn't.

In fact, they bought better and bigger shovels and added a second shift of diggers. Now, here they are, the last dying gasp of white hegemony. And they have no one to blame but themselves.

[Hortensis]

5. Over 30 years, dark-money operations succeeded in destroying

the traditional conservatism that would have resisted their intent to remake America to their benefit. Religious conservatism is shrinking in numbers and power back to what it used to be.

All this leaves today's conservatives without any defined, guiding ideology -- beyond the righteous Kool-Aid imbibed over the last few decades that at all costs they must stop the Democrats from destroying America.

Control of the hidden manipulators is weakening as dissatisfaction builds, but Republicans are still effectively an attack dog trained to protect the giant divide that has prevented We the People from uniting against the powers working to destroy government that serves us all.