The GOP’s Stages of Grief

Eight years ago, I de­clared that I would win the Tour de France be­fore Rudy Gi­uliani won the Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial nom­in­a­tion, even though he was sit­ting atop the polls. With Don­ald Trump and Ben Car­son in mind, I am think­ing such a pro­clam­a­tion might soon be in or­der again. Think­ing about the 2016 Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial nom­in­a­tion has gen­er­ally boiled down to two com­pet­ing views. The first is that Trump and/or Car­son, the con­sum­mate polit­ic­al out­siders, will re­main at the top of the GOP field, with one or the oth­er end­ing up as the nom­in­ee; the pro­spect makes some Re­pub­lic­ans ec­stat­ic and drives oth­ers in­to a near-clin­ic­al de­pres­sion. The second view: While we cer­tainly don’t know who the GOP nom­in­ee will be, we can feel reas­on­ably as­sured that it won’t be one of those two. Ad­her­ents of this view see today’s Re­pub­lic­an Party as be­hav­ing crazily but not ac­tu­ally in­sane. Things aren’t ever quite this simple, but in my view, this di­cho­tomy is close enough. Long­time read­ers of this column can guess I’m of the lat­ter view, that con­ser­vat­ives’ seri­al in­fatu­ations