Today's Cartoon - Strange Bedfellows?

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(Tom Toles, once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle)

As if further explanation were needed, Bob Cesca does anyway.

BONUS: Rethuglican hack Alex Castellanos stumbles on the truth: we have met the enemy and it is us.

Corrupt, Deluded "Establishment" Republicans Learning To Love Trump

As we noted the other day, there's a recent phenomenon of so- called "establishment" Republicans who are apparently in the Fifth Stage of Grief ("acceptance") over the increasingly likely prospect of neo- fascist fartbag Donald "Rump" Trump being their standard bearer in November.  Needless to say others have taken note also.  Prepare for some extended excerpts!

The once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle editorial board sees corrupt Republican insiders caving to Rump:

JUST WHEN you thought the presidential campaign couldn’t get any more bizarre — just when you thought American politics might finally have exhausted the possibilities for cynicism and irresponsibility — certain Republican Party insiders have begun developing strange new respect for the candidate whose meteoric rise only yesterday made him the bane of “the establishment”: Donald Trump.  [snip]

To be sure, we do not envy Republicans the Hobson’s choice they seem to face between Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz. No doubt the latter could do lasting damage to the party brand, as the establishment fears. But Mr. Trump wouldn’t? “Concerns” about him do not stem from conventional political controversy — say, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s handling of “Bridgegate.” Rather, the erstwhile casino magnate owes his rise in U.S. politics to a demagogic assault on ethnic and religious minorities, of the sort that, like previous such demagoguery in our history, has won him support — but also disqualifies him to lead a decent republic. [snip] 

... Not only is Mr. Trump manifestly temperamentally unfit, but also he has not remotely fulfilled the first duty of an aspirant to the White House, which is to offer a plausible, specific set of policy proposals. Rather, he has issued platitudes — “make America great again” — and threats — “bomb the sh-- out of them” — that please crowds but offer no sense of what he might do with power, except, possibly, abuse it.  [snip]

Some in the GOP establishment now spin Mr. Trump’s policy emptiness as a feature, not a bug. When they describe him as someone who will “cut deals,” or turn to D.C. elder statesmen for advice, they sound like people who imagine themselves filling the void in Mr. Trump’s head with the agendas of their own lobbying clients.

In other words, the insiders’ upbeat new take on Mr. Trump is a bet on his corruptibility — and a confession of their own.  (our emphasis)

Frequent blind squirrel Dana Milbank voices similar opinions:

That soft flapping sound you hear is the Grand Old Party waving the flag of surrender to Trump. Party elites — what’s left of the now-derided “establishment” — are acquiescing to the once inconceivable: that a xenophobic and bigoted showman is now the face of the Republican Party and of American conservatism.

In recent days, influential Republicans including Bob Dole, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, Rupert Murdoch and, as my Post colleagues reported, Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Peter King (N.Y.) have made noises about being able to stomach Trump. Republican donors are trying to insinuate themselves in the billionaire’s orbit. Trump himself said Thursday: “I have received so many phone calls from people that you would call ‘establishment,’ from people — generally speaking, conservatives, Republicans — that want to come onto our team.”  (our emphasis)

Even- blinder squirrel Kathleen Parker chimes in, in the belief the problem started in 2008 (!) with the ascension of snowbilly grifter Sarah "Winky" Palin to the Republican ticket:

... Meanwhile, it looks as though Republicans may get what they deserve — a bombastic, bellicose, self-aggrandizing, mean-streaked, golf-cheating, bullying narcissist without plans or policies beyond his own, no doubt fickle, fantasies.

Once Republicans forced the party to take the governor of Alaska seriously as a vice presidential candidate, they opened a populist door that they’ll not easily shut. But the GOP really owes its thanks for current circumstances to John McCain, who, you’ll recall, spent a little over an hour with an otherwise unvetted candidate and, over coffee under a sycamore tree, decided to make her second-in-command should he win the election.

And now we have Trump, who has Palin, who has cemented the anti-intellectual, anti-“elitist” fervor of the Republican base. William F. Buckley’s conservatism seems headed for the door, and National Review deserves plenty of blame. There is, alas, no one left to stand athwart history and yell, stop! (our emphasis)

Ms. Parker, the time to have stood "athwart history" and yelled "stop!" was at least 40 years ago, and as the party was relentlessly taken over by professional nihilists and grifters like Lyn Nofziger, Lee "Southern Strategy" Atwater, St. Ronnie of Hollywood, Newt Gingrich, Karl "Turdblossom" Rove, and the entire swamp of right- wing "bombastic, bellicose, self- aggrandizing, mean- streaked, golf- cheating, bullying narcissist" media whose only aim was to empty the pockets of rubes who were looking for someone to hate. Now it's time to pay for those choices.

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.