Trump's position? At what cost? Alienate Conservatives?
I call this thinking: "partying like it is 1988", 1992 or 1996.
Selecting the ideal "conservative" and placing him on the (R) ticket and then cooking up popcorn and watching election night returns in anticipation of a fair fight with 50/50 chance with the electorate ENDED 20 years ago, some 70 million people ago and 20 million or more illegal aliens ago.
Is the Rip Van Winkle act by (R)epublicrats intentional or from ignorance? While they slept, the enemy has defeated us by attrition. Our WWII generation and their boomer kids are dying and coupled with birth rates at zero or below replacement levels have been replaced by immigration and illegal alien invaders plus all their babies at a rate of ...
1980 226,545,805 2015 321,514,000 ( + 95 million )
... 2.7 million per year or 7,400 per DAY every day since Jimmy Carter was in the White House. And now another massive amnesty is pending which will turn future elections in to Soviet/Cuban/Iraqi style forgone conclusions. If those new bodies were politically breaking at 50/50 things would be a wash, a push, and traditional thinking would still be logical. The numbers I have seen say it is around 70% against us, and that fits the evidence seen in 2000 when they finally brought a majority to the polls.
While we slept they did all this to fudge the fiscal numbers, specifically for the Social Security Ponzi scheme which needs new workers on the front end, for Chamber of Commerce backed low wage workers with the added benefit of killing off the Conservatives and Republicans, Nationalism, and to breed new (D)ummycrats to bribe with welfare.
There is no election night fair fight ...
... we have all our "Conservative" states already in the bag. Others have already turned purple, And the enemy who apparently never sleeps has now set its sights on Texas.
Trump's position? At what cost? Alienate Conservatives? These are questions for 20 years ago. Conservatives will NOT stay home for Trump (R) like they did with Romney, McCain and Dole, they are too smart. It is the (R)epublicrats this time who might stay home. But we do not know if there are enough of them dumb enough to make a difference.
What you need to do is look at those maps and figure out who can flip MI, PA, WI, IN, IA, OH, FL, NC. This is what we need to focus on. We're past litmus checklist conservatism in Presidential elections ( but it is absolutely vital at the Congressional, state and local level ). Now place those 17 candidates on that map and find us a path to 270+. There is no way to grab those purple states using classic litmus checklist conservatism, the candidate has to be able to get (D) crossovers just like Ronaldus Maximus did ( and like Bush and Dole and McCain and Romney did NOT ).
I don't like typing this any more than you and others like reading it. But we have to face facts. The elephant in the room, or better yet the Rhino, is that Bush45 and his ilk like Rubio and Carly and Lindsey and Christie have no chance of dragging over any (D) voters. Why would they vote for (D)-lite when they have their own (D)? If it was ever possible Dole or Romney would have got them. The (D)ummycrats hate the (R)epublicrats just as much as the inverse. The only hope I see is for a populist who can create a jobs engine and get tax cuts. That is exactly how Reagan went from 50.8% in 1980 to 58.8% in 1984.