By Will Barber Taylor

Donald J Trump is a man who knows hate. Every other tweet sent to his account is one of abuse, wrath or pointing out his million faults. Yet Trump also knows about popularity – he wouldn’t be the Republicans Presidential candidate if he didn’t. Yet he is not so popular in his own party. The GOP, made up of old Conservative families like the Bushes don’t want a man who seems perfectly at home with the likes of Putin as their candidate. Yet, in an attempt to stop their party from splitting into a hundred thousand shattered pieces, they have got behind him. This is possibly their greatest mistake to date. Whilst Mitt Romney’s race to the White House may have ended in disaster, even if Trump wins it will be tragic for the party of Lincoln.

The main reason for this lies in what Trump will do. His big policies are mainly reactionary, idiotic and founded upon a deep lack of knowledge about how the American government works. Whilst Trump strides around the world, screaming about how great America is now, it has started a trade war with China and let Russia take over half of Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, at home, the GOP will have to face the wrath of the American public.

This is because Trump has a get out of jail card for all of his failures – the Republicans let him do it. They allowed him to be the candidate, they didn’t bar him from the race and they helped him become President. Besides, they’re all incompetent, they don’t have the knack for business that the cheese stained racoon does. So, when the American people realize that Trump’s promises of a “great” America are deeply flawed how can they run for another election? For a generation they will not be known as the “Grand Old Party” – they’ll be known as Trump’s party. The party that made sure that Donald Trump could wreck America and then dance away into the night with a couple of million in his pocket.

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Yet even if the Republicans lose to Clinton’s Democrats, they will be in the same terrible situation. The result will be likely close and the millions of votes the Republicans will have gained back thanks to Trump will evaporate. Why should they vote Republican again? They voted for Trump and he made clear that the entire Republican establishment didn’t care for them, were incompetent, etc. Any attempt at a rebrand would be met with similar results.

A smooth careerist like Marco Rubio could never get those core disenfranchised middle class voters back. He’d have to rely on the votes of ethnic minorities – yet this would surely go against the very nature of what the Republicans stand for. Their whole ethos of “America for Americans” that Trump and those like him would have help up high at the previous election would be a bitter taste in the mouths of Black and Hispanic voters.

This is the Republican party’s great dilemma. Win with Trump and forever be tainted by having to pass some of the most divisive policies in American history. Or lose with Trump and be left by the millions of Americans who wanted the orange badger to be President of the United States. There is no clear path back for the Republican Party. Trump’s cold grip will strangle it for decades to come. More likely than not, in the next few years the “Grand Old Party” will be no more, gone forever, flattened under the weight of history’s biggest fart.