Reality bites the GOP

Enough with the denial. Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, and there is no chance for a real conservative to run a viable independent campaign against him.

There is no more denying that Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

In politics, reality often arrives long before we can accurately perceive it. That seems particularly true in the wake of Donald Trump's victory in the Republican presidential primaries, cemented by the withdrawal of every other challenger in the field earlier this month. Predictions of contested conventions and conservative-wing delegate strategies have all been rendered moot. Trump may not have won a majority of the vote in Republican primaries, but by the time he takes the stage in Cleveland he will have won a majority of the delegates.

Some in the GOP still struggle with the result, however, and have not come to terms with reality — at least, not yet. Scenarios of contested conventions have not been totally discarded, but instead spun into fantasies of delegate revolts that are based on fundamental misunderstandings of what the primaries tell us about the Republican Party in 2016. And it is not just the conservative opposition that labors under those misperceptions, although they are the ones acting on them at the moment.

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Edward Morrissey

Edward Morrissey has been writing about politics since 2003 in his blog, Captain's Quarters, and now writes for HotAir.com. His columns have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Post, The New York Sun, the Washington Times, and other newspapers. Morrissey has a daily Internet talk show on politics and culture at Hot Air. Since 2004, Morrissey has had a weekend talk radio show in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and often fills in as a guest on Salem Radio Network's nationally-syndicated shows. He lives in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota with his wife, son and daughter-in-law, and his two granddaughters. Morrissey's new book, GOING RED, will be published by Crown Forum on April 5, 2016.