The Gathering Doom: Republican Poo-Bahs Resigned To Trump?

The narrative of the week is shaping up to be, "The Republican establishment is resigning itself to Trump."  With neo-fascist fartbag Donald "Rump" Trump pulling in nearly 40 percent of Republican primary voters, several writers are seeing unmistakable signs that the Republican hierarchy and donor class, that recently was said to be planning an all- out effort to take down Trump, has meekly come to the conclusion that he very well may be their party's nominee.  Here's a sampling of that opinion:

Steve Benen

...[T]here’s no denying the fact that the tenor and direction of the Republican conversation is fundamentally different than it was just a couple of months ago. It’s tempting to think, at this stage, the GOP donor class and its allies would be scrambling, in hair-on-fire desperation, to bolster a rival like Ted Cruz in order to prevent Trump’s success.
There’s nothing to suggest anything close to this is actually happening.

Jonathan Chait

The party may actually be deciding that Trump is a man it can do business with. The Republican nomination has resembled Heath Ledger’s Joker meeting with the Gotham underworld, moving from revulsion and anger to fear and then resignation and even intrigue.

E.J. Dionne, Jr.

Today’s Republican crisis was thus engineered by the party leadership’s step-by-step capitulation to a politics of unreason, a policy of silence toward the most extreme and wild charges against Obama, and a lifting up of resentment and anger over policy and ideas as the party’s lodestars.

Many Republicans are now alarmed that their choice may come down to Trump, the candidate of a reality-show populism that tries to look like the real thing, and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), an ideologue whom they fear would lead their cause to a devastating defeat. 

While we're still seven months from the conventions and and 10 from the election, and a vote has yet to be cast, the idea that a narcissistic authoritarian buffoon like Rump has a very legitimate chance to lead the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party in November is, shall we say, intriguing.   Progressives and Democrats need to be careful, as always, not to assume an easy path to victory ahead.  So many variables -- the world and national economy ("are you better off now") terrorism, and the usual plutocrat/ Republican voter suppression and mega- spending -- could make this a much closer election than it has any right to be.