We had 17 candidates this time around. Many were quite good.
The problem isn't the party, per se, but the primary voters that *CHOOSE* the worst candidate of the bunch.
We had some decent candidates in 2012, too, but we got left with Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in the end.
There are politicians with potential in the GOP still. Consider the ones that held out against endorsing Trump as long as they could. Consider a few that still haven't. We have good candidates. We do not have a good party and we don't have a way to make sure the best candidates actually win the primaries. We have governors like Walker and LePage (outbursts aside) fighting the good fight in the states. We have a few Senators, Mike Lee and Ben Sasse (and yes, even Ted Cruz) foremost among them, willing to buck party leadership.
What the Tolkienish one neglects to note is that we, in effect, already have a split party. Note what happened in 2012 and 2014: McConnell vs. Bevin, McDaniel vs. Cochran, Graham vs. everyone, Akin vs. Brunner and Steelman. Consider the differences between John Kasich and Ted Cruz, the two candidates left standing against Trump. We have one sub-party that is older, more moderate, more focused on social issues, and more prone to boilerplate solutions. This is the GOP of old, the one that independents see as the Republican Party, the one they won't even consider. We have another that is younger, bolder, more concerned about fiscal issues, and more willing to buck orthodoxy. This one has potential.
Donald Trump, of course, is neither, but he's exploited a weakness among one of the GOP's most oft-neglected base: rural, working-class voters in the midwest who have been left in the cold by the evolving economy and the GOP's "free trade at all costs" dogma. The side that can best incorporate the needs of us (I count myself among them) will build the coalition for the future.
