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Sunday, May 8, 2016

Unity Is Coming

It never fails to surprise me just how carried away people sometimes get with the latest political events.  To a great extent, the people at fault are the media.  They love to take anything and blow it up into something major that might drive ratings a bit higher.  Then there are the opportunists who want to use events to push their agendas.  At the base of it all, however, we have millions of ordinary people who get sucked in by the latest news without taking a moment to step back and look at the big picture.

Right now, the big story is about how the GOP is splitting over the Trump candidacy.  There's going to be a third party (or so the claim goes.)  Paul Ryan won't endorse Trump (or so the claim goes.)  The Democrats are going to crush Trump in the fall (or so the claim goes.)  Remember all these items and then wait a month.  By June 7th, roughly a month from now, there won't be a viable third party movement, Ryan will have endorsed Trump, and Hillary is still going to be busy dealing with Bernie Sanders.  All of the current brouhaha will have subsided.

Remember this.  The media tells us that Hillary will win a crushing victory over Trump, but the average of all the recent polls shows her with just a 6 point lead.  That's hardly a landslide.  Indeed, given the savage battles of the Cruz and Trump forces in the GOP that were fully underway when all these polls were taken, it is safe to assume that the race is actually closer.  Trump may even be in the lead.

Remember this too.  Paul Ryan cannot afford to distance himself from his party's nominee unless he wants to resign as Speaker first.  Ryan knows his choice is to support Trump or to watch Hillary become president.  For him, that's not much of a choice.  Ultimately, he has to endorse.

As for all the others in the Never Trump group, they don't matter much.  There won't be many people who will vote against Trump because Lindsay Graham won't endorse him.  Indeed, there are probably more folks for whom that is a plus rather than a minus.  The refusal by Jeb! to endorse Trump is also not going to sway many people.  In the primaries, Jeb! only got votes from friends and family, or so it seemed.  No one cared about him then, and they won't now.  Silence from George H.W.Bush and George W. Bush is more important, but those two are basically staying out of the race (something that they did last time as well.) 

The real truth is that unity is coming to the bulk of the GOP.  It will pain the media to see it happen, but it is coming nevertheless.

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