George Will: ‘Highest Priority’ of the GOP Should Be to Stop Trump

Columnist George Will is so alarmed by Donald Trump‘s “comprehensive unpleasantness” doing well in the Republican primary that in his newest column, he just comes out and says stopping Trump needs to be conservatives’ highest priority.

Will asks at the top if there is anything remotely redeemable about this “fundamentally sad figure” who coasts on his “compulsive boasting” and need for others’ approval.

It seems like Trump’s sorta-embrace of Vladimir Putin (he snarks that maybe it was just a coincidence that dozens of Putin critics have ended up dead) was the last straw of sorts for Will. He said, ” Trump has forced conservatives to recognize their immediate priority.”

He understands how crucial it is for Republicans to win the White House and beat the Democrats, but as far as Will is concerned, “Conservatives’ highest priority now must be to prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination in this, the GOP’s third epochal intraparty struggle in 104 years.”

He goes through the infamous Republican fight of 1912 between nominee William Howard Taft and challenger-turned-third-party-candidate Teddy Roosevelt, and how they lost to the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson:

In 2016, a Trump nomination would not just mean another Democratic presidency. It would also mean the loss of what Taft and then Goldwater made possible — a conservative party as a constant presence in U.S. politics.

You can read the full column here.

[h/t Breitbart]
[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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