All through the campaign a common charge from Trump supporters is that a non-vote for Donald Trump is a practical vote for Hillary Clinton. Yesterday Donald Trump declared war on the Republican Party and proved the fallacy of that charge.
As Republicans rejected their nominee in the wake of plummeting support, Trump fired a fusillade of tweets at the Republican Party and Paul Ryan. Trump charged Republicans with disloyalty and said that Ryan was a “weak and ineffective leader” who had given him “zero support.”
Taking their cue, Trump surrogates and supporters took to the airwaves and social media to attack the Republican Speaker of the House. According to the Washington Times, conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham called Ryan’s refusal to defend Trump’s indefensible behavior a “really dumb move” and said that the Republican down ballot was “going to get crushed in this election” by Trump supporters. Rush Limbaugh, quoted by Media Matters, asked, “What good is there a [sic] Republican Party if it cannot even unify around the concept of winning?”
What the Trump supporters fail to admit is that Trump is not winning. A new poll shows him trailing Hillary by nine points in Ohio. Real Clear Politics polls for the battleground states show Trump trailing in all of them except Iowa. And the gap is widening.
Trump is even in trouble in red states. A new Deseret News poll shows that Trump’s lead in Utah has evaporated. Trump is now in a three-way statistical tie with Clinton and independent Evan McMullin. He also has thin margins in Texas and Georgia, states that should be solidly red.
To insist that the GOP continue to support an unpopular candidate who is in danger of dragging down the entire party shows that the Trump movement is nothing more than a personality cult. The Trumpians care nothing for the congressional races that will determine who controls the next Senate and House of Representatives.
If the Republican Party is to be unified around “the concept of winning,” it must look beyond Donald Trump. The Trumpians seem not to care that, as Trump goes down to defeat, a Republican majority in Congress will be necessary to stop Hillary’s agenda. If they truly care about the Second Amendment, religious freedom, the Supreme Court and myriad other issues the GOP needs to preserve its members in the Senate.
Instead, even as new Trump scandals roll out daily, many Trump supporters are openly calling for the defeat of Republicans in Congress on social media. These attacks on Republican congressmen, the only people that will stand between Hillary and her full liberal agenda, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Trump movement was never about conservative principles or stopping Hillary. The Trump movement was about nothing more than the cult of Donald Trump.
The Trump supporters calling for the defeat of the GOP are not tacitly failing to support the party or conservative principles. They are actively working to give the next Clinton Administration a congressional majority with which to subvert the Constitution.
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