Establishment Republicans Bid Twee No Trump

Saturday night, I met Cerise at the Round Robin Bar for cocktails prior to attending a show at the nearby Warner Theater. In retrospect, maybe we should have gone to the Old Ebbitt Grill or POV instead, because the Round Robin turned out to be a total zoo of drunken Republicans, crying in their beer about Donald Trump.
Well, some of them were crying in their beer about him, actually, but most of them had gone quite a bit farther than that. “Don’t look now,” Cerise whispered to me as we waited for the bartender to serve us, “but I think that guy over there in the corner is banging his head against the wall.”
“Oh yeah,” I replied, “I recognize him. He’s a prominent conservative political scientist. You’d recognize his name if I told you, believe me.”
“So what’s the matter with him?” Cerise wondered.
“He’s the one who lead the faction of Republican Beltway insiders that advised the party to ignore Donald Trump because Trump was certain to say or do something so weird, so offensive and so disgusting that his campaign would simply implode,” I explained. “Only it turned out that the more weird, offensive and disgusting Trump got, the better the Republican primary and caucus voters liked him.”
“And that poor fellow blames himself?” Cerise supposed.
“There’s not a political scientist alive who blames themselves for anything,” I told her as my Macallan 18 and her Idol cosmopolitan arrived. “He’s probably just frustrated because now, nobody is going to pay him outrageous bucks for his penetrating insights anymore, much less offer him book deals and television appearances, or serious column inches to prognosticate in the op-ed pages of major newspapers.”
“Oh, my God,” she gasped, “check out that guy over there at the table with three empty pitchers of margaritas! I think he just keeled over and passed out!”
“Sure looks like it,” I agreed. “He’s a polling consultant who hopscotched from Lindsey Graham to Bobby Jindal to Rick Perry to Scott Walker to Rick Santorum to Carly Fiorina to Jim Gilmore to Rand Paul to Ben Carson to Chris Christie, all to no avail. Every one of them crumbled like stale cornbread before the Trump juggernaut. An now, he’s developed a reputation for being a jinx and nobody will hire him.”
“Holy [expletive], Tom, look at that!” Cerise exclaimed, obviously restraining an impulse to point while nodding excitedly in the direction of a half-delirious gentleman cutting paper dolls out of the latest edition of the Washington Times.
“Elephants,” I noted as he proudly unfolded the string, holding it high between his outstretched arms, grinning like the Cheshire Cat and cackling with demented laughter. “Too much absinthe would be my guess. They really ought to cut customers off after three of them.”
“What… I mean… who,” she stammered, completely aghast.
“That fellow,” I revealed, “contributed over five million dollars to Right to Rise, the Jeb Bush super PAC.”
Just then, a heated argument broke out at a table of four located on the other side of the room. The two men at the table who were merely drunk sought to restrain the other two, who were clearly three sheets to the wind, from engaging in a good old-fashioned brawl.
“Look at the suits those guys are wearing,” Cerise observed. “What do you figure – three, maybe four thousand dollars apiece?”
“Closer to five or six thousand,” I commented.
“So what’s got them behaving like a couple of snockered rednecks disagreeing on the relative merits of their favorite football teams?” she wondered.
“Those are lobbyists,” I said, “venting their anger at Trump. He’s rejected their overtures and ignored them throughout his entire campaign because he alone doesn’t need the money their corporate clients are accustomed to buying elections with. The guy wearing the fifteen-thousand dollar red toupee who has the fellow with the fifty-thousand dollar nose job in a head lock works for Big Pharma, and the guy in the bespoke Ermeneglido Zegna blazer and seven-hundred dollar Stefano Ricci dress shirt who’s trying to pull him off represents a trade association of several prominent defense contractors.”
“Collins!” a familiar voice bellowed as I looked to my left to see Dick Bilmoer of the Republican National Committee plunk down next to me. “Come to gloat,” he opened, gesturing grandly around, his glass of Round Robin’s signature branch water mint julep in hand, “I presume?”
“Me?” I dryly responded, “Gloating? Of course not. We merely I stopped by for drinks before the theater, and just by chance happened to get a front row seats at this circus as a bonus, free of charge.”
“So you’re not the closet liberal they say you are, then?” he inquired with a skeptical tone.
“The liberals say I’m a closet conservative,” I shot back. “Which, to my mind, proves I’m doing an unbiased job of dispensing advice in the most partisan Washington since the late 1850’s, at least.”
“Touché, touché,” he morosely chuckled as he cast an eye toward Cerise. “And who, may I ask, is this lovely lady?”
“My friend Cerise,” I informed him, subsequently turning to her by way of introduction. “Cerise, this is Dick, an important and influential client who is highly placed in the Republican National Committee.”
“A pleasure,” she cooed, extending her hand. “Although I must warn you that, unlike Tom here, I am, in fact, a liberal.”
“Nobody’s perfect,” Bilmoer quipped as he gave her a cordial handshake.
“So what do you make of all this?” Cerise needled. “As a big kahuna at the RNC, one might suspect you would be somewhat… chagrined.”
Bilmoer turned his gaze slowly around the room, taking in the bedlam. “Yes, it’s true, I’m afraid. Trump’s been a rather… disruptive influence,” he admitted. “But we’re working on a solution.”
“You’re not depending on Mitt Romney, I hope,” Cerise taunted.


“Well,” Bilmoer cautiously proposed, “Romney does have the potential to serve as a voice of reason and bring a vital charge of unifying energy to a chaotic situation.”
“Mitt Romney,” Cerise snickered, “is a sleepwalker inside a robot wrapped in a zombie. He has all the unifying energy of a wet dish rag, and speaks with the reasoned voice of a prep school debate team rebuttal presenter.”
“Yeah,” Bilmoer shrugged, “there is that. Like I said, nobody’s perfect, and Mitt Romney’s a perfect example. He still has plenty of redeeming qualities, though.”
“Dick,” I opined, “I’ve got to tell you, even if I can’t charge you for it – having Mitt Romney denounce Donald Trump is more likely than not to backfire and increase the number votes Trump receives.”
Bilmoer’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No [expletive]? You really think so?”
“Say duh!” Cerise interjected with a derisive laugh. “Only a member of the Republican establishment could possibly believe otherwise!”
“Is your friend,” Bilmoer huffed indignantly, “trying to imply that I’m… out of touch or something?”
“I’m positive,” I assured him, “that she’s not trying to imply that you’re out of touch. She’s saying your remarks have convinced her you are definitely, unequivocally and undeniably out of touch. And I’m afraid I have to agree with her – this Romney to the rescue idea isn’t just out of touch, it’s out where the buses don’t run. It can only make things worse for the Republican Party.”
“Worse?” Bilmoer wailed, waving arms around helplessly, “how could it be worse? We’re about to get steamrollered by this… this… this…”
“Ignorant, obnoxious, ill-mannered Mussolini with an absurd comb-over?” Cerise suggested.
“Yeah,” he huffed, “all right, this ignorant, obnoxious, ill-mannered Mussolini, Donald Trump, is walking all over us and the more we point out how ignorant and obnoxious and ill-mannered he is, the more the voters love him!”
“Serves you right!” Cerise declared.
“What do you mean by that?” Bilmoer demanded.
“I mean,” she shot back, “that ever since Richard Nixon, the Republican Party has played to the public’s anger, fear and resentment. You’ve constantly used racism and hate to divide the electorate and win. You’ve consistently played to stereotypes of the poor, foreigners and minorities in order to get what you want. And all the while, you have treated the facts as completely optional! Ronald Reagan claimed that air pollution comes from trees, for Christ’s sake! He made up whatever lies he felt like inventing to serve his purposes and whenever anyone challenged him about those lies, he simply ignored them. Does that sound familiar, huh? And how about Dubya and his imaginary weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? For decades, you Republicans have done nothing but foist fantasies like the Laffer Curve and Intelligent Design on the public in order to line the pockets of your Wall Street masters and bolster your support with superstitious bohunks who want to live in the Good Old Days that never were! You got the Glass–Steagall Act repealed and gee whiz, look what happened – another Great Depression that nobody has the guts to call by its real name! Some surprise that was, wasn’t it, you unscrupulous, amoral, hypocritical…”
“Is she always like this?” Bilmoer implored.
“Usually, she’s very sweet,” I vouched. “I think your complaints about Donald Trump may have touched a nerve, so so to speak.”
“Touched a nerve?” Cerise echoed sarcastically. “Touched a nerve? Listen, Dick, for decades, you Republicans did everything possible to build a base of angry, frustrated, fearful, xenophobic rubes that you could manipulate to serve your corporate overlords at the ballot box. Then your masters got greedy and careless and imbecilic and wrecked the economy so bad that even your legion of suckers who had put up with thirty years of exploitation finally figured out they had been duped. And you know what that meant, Dick? It meant that they were ripe to follow the first charismatic maniac to come along, that’s what. You had fixed them, Dick, you and your fellow Republicans, you’d fixed them up really well – fixed them up so that fear and anger and resentment and hate were the only things they knew, the only things they could respond to. And now, Donald Trump has turned them all on you, what he calls ‘the Republican establishment.’ Well, God damn it, you [expletive] fools deserve everything you’re getting! You created the Republican base, and now somebody who’s a better puppet master than any of you is making them come back and bite you right in the [expletive]! It serves you right, you cynical, unscrupulous…”
“No! You’re wrong! It’s Obama’s fault!” Bilmoer protested. “He’s weak! He’s uncertain! That’s why the people are angry! Seven years and he hasn’t accomplished anything!”
“Oh really? How convenient!” Cerise sneered. “You stymie his every initiative, then blame the voters’ rage on him!”
“Well,” I interceded, “whatever the cause, it’s pretty obvious that if Trump gets the nomination, which seems pretty damn likely at the moment, the Republican Party’s going to have one hell of a problem.”
“We can stop him!” Bilmoer declared. “We’ll get Cruz, Rubio and Kasich to win their home states and deprive Trump of the necessary one thousand two hundred and thirty seven delegates!”
“Dream on,” Cerise snickered.
“It’s been tried before,” Bilmoer insisted, “By the Whigs in 1836!”
“Whigs? 1836?” Cerise laughed. “Listen to yourself! You’re pathetic!”
“And it didn’t work,” I noted. “Martin Van Buren defeated them anyway.”
“All right,” Bilmoer persisted, “even if we can’t do that, we can get the delegates to change the convention rules before the first ballot!”
“How the hell are you going do that?” Cerise demanded. “Voodoo?”
“We’ll get the RNC to convince the Convention Rules Committee to send new rules to the floor requiring a vote prior to the first ballot to allow delegates to unbind themselves.”
“Ha!” Cerise jeered. “The only way you’re going to get the convention delegates to unbind themselves will be with a thousand gallons of prune juice!”
“Listen, smarty pants,” Bilmoer admonished, swigging his bourbon and shaking his finger at Cerise, “the delegates to the Republican Convention have the ultimate and final say as to what rules will govern them! And if they decide that the new rule is they don’t have to vote the way their state primaries and caucuses came out, then that’s their prerogative!”
“And screw the will of the people, right?  Not to mention state laws that require convention delegates to vote as pledged on the first ballot at the very least!” Cerise mocked. “In that case, why have primaries and caucuses in the first place, if the delegates can show up in Cleveland and decide to ignore the voters who sent them there?”
“Ah, you see,” Bilmoer argued, now jabbing his finger at Cerise, “that’s the point, right there! The voters didn’t send them to the convention – their state Republican Party organizations did!”
“Oh,” Cerise chuckled with an air of triumphant irony, “so in the final analysis, the Republican Party is like a private country club. You make up your own rules any way you want, just as long as it means you can keep certain people out!”
“Yeah!” Bilmoer snorted. “And the Supreme Court says we can do it if we feel like it, too! Political convention delegates can’t be compelled to obey state laws when they are attending a convention outside their own state! Right Tom? Isn’t that what Cousins v. Wigoda says?”
“You’re forgetting,” I reminded him, “that I’m a policy consultant, not an attorney.”
“Okay,” Cerise tittered as she downed the last sip of her cosmopolitan, “this I’ve got to see. You know that Trump will go hire an army of lawyers and fight anything you do to take the nomination away from him. All you’re going to accomplish is the complete destruction of the Republican Party, and the really hilarious part is, after that happens, if Trump still wants to call himself a Republican, nobody will be able to keep him from doing it!”
“She’s got you there, Dick,” I remarked. “Maybe after the dust clears in Cleveland this July, you and your buddies will have to name your party something else.”
“How about the ‘Rich Stupid Overprivileged [Expletive]-hole Party?’” Cerise suggested as she picked her purse up from the bar and took my arm, throwing Bilmoer a withering glance. “Or is that too long?”
“It is quite a mouthful,” I commented as I killed my scotch and slid off the bar stool. “Maybe you should just resort to historical shorthand and call yourselves the Whigs.”