I do recall the Politico running a story about the "Establishment" getting behind Cruz in the last gasps of his campaign. The "Politico" being where the Oligarchy dumps their press releases and leaks. Most of it attributed to "Insiders" if I recall that said the GOP Establishment was prepared to lose the White House to Hillary because they believed doing so would enable them to keep the House and Senate. I thought I remember some of the reasoning being discussed was due to the belief that Trump as the nominee would cost the GOP both houses AND the White House.
INVAR, I wasn't the one who made the initial claim that the "National GOP" supported one of those guys over the other period. Another poster did, and I questioned that because it wasn't what I remembered. I then offered actual evidence from Bush and Romney themselves -- not just a Politico story -- that they backed Cruz over Trump. Nobody has posted a substantive response to that.
Now, if someone wants to offer some actual evidence that the reverse was true, fine. But I'm not sure how much more "National GOP" or "GOP Establishment" you can get than Bush, Romney, and Rubio, and given that all three were quoted as supporting Cruz over Trump...I think it's a tall order.
As to tone, it would be foolhardy to think that a demagogue who speaks like Trump does about all his targets of derision and ridicule in the manner that he does, has no role in creating a zeitgeist and atmosphere that makes violence easily stoked and engaged. History proves that as a fact.
The left rioting because they don't like something is hardly a phenomenon that began with Trump.
Leftist goons have been shutting down and disrupting conservative speakers on college campuses and elsewhere for decades, and it gets virtually no coverage by the left-leaning media because they don't want to be perceived as anti-college student, or as endorsing what the speaker was saying. And when they do it, their rationale has always been "we think that's offensive and you shouldn't be allowed to say it, so this is really your fault".
Am I the only one that remembers that? Heck, the same type of goons, this time from BLM actually disrupted a
Democrat meeting by shouting down O'Malley and Bernie. And in general, the media is reluctant to call them out on that for fear of being perceived as supporting the "offensive" ideas. This is a long-term problem that has gotten progressively worse over time, with the radical left constantly moving the goalposts as to what constitutes speech they will tolerate.
And this is an issue that conservatives should be united in combatting.So when thousands of violent leftist goons show up to try to shut down a rally, and then assault peaceful citizens who are exiting the rally, I don't care what Trump is saying inside because that
dwarfs the far more serious, long-term problem of the left forcibly silencing viewpoints they don't like. And when Cruz and Rubio say, "the rioters are wrong, but Trump really shouldn't be inciting that stuff with his comments", they are giving the left exactly what they want.
The leftist radicals don't care if they are condemned. All they care about is being able to squelch viewpoints they don't like, and if what they get out of this is coverage that is split between condemning them, and condemning what Trump says, then they have accomplished their goals.
I truly cannot believe that so many self-described conservatives cannot see the monstrous crime of using force to shut down opposition political speech for the critical issue that it is. Instead, they want to use it as another opportunity to get in their digs that Trump is an undeserving jackass. Of course he is, but that shouldn't even enter the equation when discussing the violence of the left, because that simply gives them exactly what they want.
