Donald Trump isn't the GOP nominee in spite of the party Establishment

[All Along The Watchtower]

He is the nominee of that party because of its Establishment.

The reality is that a significant plurality - maybe even an outright majority - of Republican voters want nothing to do with the people who have historically led their party. Even the "movement conservatives" like Ted Cruz are seen by many Republican voters as inseparable from the Establishment that they so loathe. Trump was exactly the kind of candidate they were looking for.

Trump has no loyalty to the Republican Party at any level - and that's the whole point.

[angus]

Your post is so convoluted and unsupported that it's hard for me to tell whether you're contradicting your thread title or arguing in favor of it.

You're right about one thing:  Donald Trump has no loyalty to the GOP (or anything other than the Almighty Dollar.)

[Indy Texas]

I don't agree with this.

The concept of what the "Establishment" is in the GOP has become so convoluted as to be a worthless distinction. "Establishment" is just whoever a given Republican politician disagrees with or wants to smear.

For example, part of the reason Tea Party insurgent candidates have had a hard time winning primaries the past couple of cycles is because "conventional" Republicans have internalized so many of the policies and rhetoric of the Tea Party.

There is a misguided belief among Movement Conservatives that the party establishment collaborated with Trump and wanted him to win. Usually they claim it's because a "real conservative" like Cruz would have "threatened their gravy train."

(1) The party leadership's preferred candidates (Bush, Kasich and, later, Rubio) were so weak and lacking sustainable support, that they failed to exercise any meaningful control over the primaries this year. They did not aid and abet Trump, they simply declined to assist Cruz. And they did this due to:
     (a) Naïveté about who Trump really was. They had an absurdly optimistic belief that Trump could potentially be stage-managed into an acceptable, electable candidate.
     (b) The fact that Cruz had made himself their enemy with his behavior the past four years in the Senate. Helping Cruz would set the very dangerous precedent that someone could wantonly disrespect and harm the party for their own personal ambitions and face no consequences for it.
     (c) The fact that Cruz, contrary to the belief of many in the grassroots, was no more electable than Trump. He is an inherently unappealing person on an almost subconscious level and his Rick Santorum-esque religious views would have been a general election disaster. Clinton would have painted him as a Republican Ayatollah.

(2) What "gravy train" would this be? The one where Jim DeMint can become the head of the Heritage Foundation? The one where Tea Party politicians can be given think tank sinecures and business from generous donors?

[Fuzzy Bear]

I don't quite get the point of the poster that initiated this thread.

I think I'm in agreement with PR to the extent that I believe that Trump won the nomination because the National GOP was composed of a bloc of folks that included somewhere around 35% of it's Presidential Republican base that were NOT "small-government conservatives".  These are the folks that drove Trump's candidacy, and Trump added to that base just enough to get nominated.  Trump has changed the GOP for good; they are not the monolithic conservative party they were trying to become until Trump smashed Ted Cruz (the ultimate "I'm the REAL conservative!" candidate).