Republican voters are about to hand the party's presidential nomination to Donald Trump, and a conservative columnist lamented that they'd rather antagonize their political enemies than win November's election.
The remaining GOP challenger, Nikki Haley, has begged Republican voters to move on from Trump's "unhinged chaos" that drags down the party's congressional candidates, but conservative Charlie Sykes wrote a new column for The Daily Beast explaining why she doesn't have a shot to win the nomination.
"But on the eve of Super Tuesday, this much seems clear: The Republican voters don’t want normal," Sykes wrote, "and Trump’s expected sweep will put an exclamation point on the GOP’s full embrace of the chaos that will define the next year."
"Electability? All in all, they’d rather have The Trump Show," he added.
A number of polls show the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador is a stronger general election candidate than Trump, who's seen as too extreme by even some of his own supporters, but GOP primary voters have made abundantly clear what they want.
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"In a choice between winning and a year of unhinged bedlam — it’s frankly no contest," Sykes wrote. "Republican voters look at Trump’s attempts to overthrow the government, the document thefts, the gaseous malice, the insults to service men and women, and his pledges to pardon rioters who attacked cops…and they have decided they want four more years of it."
Trump has been indicted on 91 counts in four jurisdictions and owes nearly a half-billion dollars after courts found him liable for sexual assault, defamation and fraud, but Sykes said there's no indication that Republicans are anything but "entertained."
"The rambling ugliness of Trump’s rhetoric — demagogic, crude, mocking, and chronically fake — continues to enthrall his base precisely because it offends all the right people," Sykes wrote. "There are scores to be settled, hippies to be punched, and libs to be owned."
"And Republicans will accept no substitutes," he added.
