Chris Campbell: Trump’s success is the result of Republican irresponsibility

I had the scariest dream last night. A major political party spent seven years feeding apocalyptic vitriol to their base of supporters until it ended up with half-baked reality TV star slash Looney Tunes villain as the odds-on favorite for its presidential nomination.

Wait a second … uh-oh.

You may remember that back in November I predicted that Republican voters would end up tiring of Donald Trump’s antics long before the Iowa primary even started. And yet it’s the beginning of March, and this steaming pile of s___ has won three consecutive states and sits atop the polls in almost every other one. Yikes.

It seems that I, Chris Campbell, the legendary political analyst, underestimated Trump. But did I really? He’s still running an exuberantly fact-free campaign predicated on bizarre, misspelled diss tweets and not-so-casual racism.

But hey, I’m not here to bash Trump. I’m here to bash his creators, the folks who made this turd show possible: the bigwig donors and elite politicians in the Republican establishment.

You see, back at the start of Barack Obama’s presidency in 2009, then-Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell knew that his party would be dead in the water if they tried any of this “bipartisanship” mumbo-jumbo the new, popular president was talking about. So he hatched a plan: obstruct the President’s agenda as much as possible and scream bloody murder at each of his successes. Then, as voters came to realize how bad of a job the president and the Democrats were apparently doing, they’d flock to the Republicans in droves.

It’s worked beautifully. Republicans won big in the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections and now hold over two-thirds of the country’s governorships and their largest congressional majority since 1928.

It wasn’t an easy process. It takes serious talent to pull political stunts so crazy and irresponsible that they could compromise the well-being of the country. Fortunately, the insurgent anti-government Tea Party movement proved a superb talent scout, packing Congress with folks cynical enough to sacrifice good governance in the name of ideology. A debt-ceiling crisis, sequestration cuts, a government shutdown and now a refusal to even vote on a Supreme Court nominee. Their Greatest Hits Collection ranges from mere irresponsibility to unencumbered stupidity.

The Republican establishment taught its voters that government is something to be distrusted and rebelled against. They twice rode their anti-government anger to victory. And now their dirty, tea-stained laundry is finally coming home.

The Republican base has been emboldened by years of Tea Party shenanigans. They’re going to want someone who reflects their anger towards the party elites complicit in “politics as usual.”

Someone who convinces people that confirming their worst prejudices is really just “truth-telling.”

Someone who doesn’t think white nationalists are really all that bad.

Someone who’s made banning 1.6 billion people from entering the country because of their religion an okay thing to support.

Someone who’s tried his darndest to alienate every single demographic in America.

Someone whose demeanor screams, “Hey, I may be a sleazy scumbag, but it’s my high-energy, can-do brand of sleazy scumbaggery that will take America back to the top.”

Someone like Trump.

And you only need to look at the weakness of his opposition to see how little control the establishment really has over its primary. They hate second-place holder Sen. Ted Cruz, someone who would deport every undocumented immigrant, carpet bomb the Middle East and insists that earning the hatred of one’s colleagues is the mark of an effective president. But the base loves him. A face like his wouldn’t lie to you.

Wait, isn’t this the same guy who literally shut down the federal government for 16 days over Obamacare? And he’s in second place for the presidential nomination?Behind the living embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins?

The establishment’s last hope is Marco Rubio. The Florida senator is young. He’s Hispanic. He can memorize a speech. I can’t say he’s an objectively terrible person like Trump or Cruz. And let’s dispel with this notion that he’s not willing to mindlessly parrot establishment talking points in exchange for lapdog status from bigwig donors. He knows exactly what he’s doing, platform coherence be damned.

But even though Rubio was a part of the insurgent right back in 2010 and has taken hardline conservative stances on nearly every issue, Republican voters just aren’t having him. He’s still trailing Trump in almost every state, including his home state of Florida.

That’s why I’m having so much fun watching the establishment panic and squirm and throw money at something, anything, to stop Trump’s increasingly clear path to the nomination. It’s obvious that they don’t want him, and yet he just keeps “winning, winning, winning.” I’m really looking forward to when he wins the nomination. They’ll try to sell him as a halfway decent human being for the general election. We all know what a load of bull that will be.

They should be glad. After all, their plan worked. They spoon-fed their voters apocalyptic vitriol. They let obstructionism become a knee-jerk reaction. They’ve governed irresponsibly and stupidly. They whipped their base into a frothing mob.

They created Trump. And now they have to live with him. Let’s just hope America doesn’t have to live with President Trump.