Jonah Goldberg: Will the GOP finally do something about its Trump problem?
One of the most important things Donald Trump has done for conservatism is to make it impossible for the GOP to nominate a conservative candidate in 2016. Trump won the GOP nomination and is a true conservative while Hillary Clinton is an elitist liberal who has never held public office. His campaign provided a big reason for most Republicans to turn their back on the GOP and to vote for Democrats for the remainder of the campaign.
This has had a devastating effect on the nomination process for Republicans in the primaries and will do the same in the general election when the anti-Trump media and Trump’s conservative opponents finally get tired of Trump and start looking to someone else.
There is a simple solution for conservatives who truly wish to nominate a conservative candidate in 2016. They should nominate someone who has never run for public office. No matter what happens in the primaries, they can win on the strength of their conservative credentials in the general election and win the nomination. They can make their case that their conservative credentials will carry their party over any nominee of their choice.
And if anyone asks them which candidate best represents their principles, they can say, “well, Donald Trump isn’t a conservative. Who is?”
Many conservatives have thought this scenario for a while, waiting for the Republican Party establishment to come to their rescue and nominate a moderate to stop Trump from becoming the Republican nominee.
But they have waited and waited and waited. And waiting is getting harder and harder as the establishment has been pushing moderate Republicans to withdraw from the race.
The establishment has had plenty of time to nominate a moderate candidate — the three most-recent examples are Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie — and a number of them have failed to even announce their candidacies.
So that has left most conservatives — including me — to look elsewhere to find a candidate who is a true