Read on Twitter
Let me put a finer point on it. Parties exist to keep dangerous demagogues from securing the opportunity to stand before the nation for election. I & many others said this in 2015 and 2016. The GOP did nothing. That was the first & most important moment to act. https://twitter.com/NappNazworth/status/1347209198124281856
4/8/16 - "Parties have the right to say this person is not a Democrat or a Republican ... No other democracy in the world nominates its candidates in primaries. All the parliamentary democracies have party conferences and they have lists."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/party-primaries-are-not-public-decisions-rules-154558765.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/party-primaries-are-not-public-decisions-rules-154558765.html
2/4/16 - "If Bush (or New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or Ohio Gov. John Kasich) wages an extended battle with Rubio, that creates a huge risk that Cruz or Trump would be the nominee." https://www.yahoo.com/news/anxious-gop-establishment-wary-of-1357550308360246.html
2/18/16 - "Rubio has almost entirely avoided squaring off with Trump, and on Thursday continued to do so." https://www.yahoo.com/news/rubio-and-trump-present-gop-with-choice-of-043158191.html
2/20/16 - "The longer that Cruz and Rubio divide up the non-Trump vote, the more time the New York real estate developer will have to rack up delegates and win 50 percent of the primary electorate in popular vote totals." https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-senators-now-stand-between-trump-and-the-gop-035630669.html
3/4/16 - "With more than half the [GOP] opposed to frontrunner Donald Trump, yet also split between his three major remaining opponents, the conditions are as ripe as they have ever been for a showdown on the floor of a [GOP] Convention this summer." https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-at-a-disadvantage-in-a-brokered-convention-152052016.html
![3/4/16 - "With more than half the [GOP] opposed to frontrunner Donald Trump, yet also split between his three major remaining opponents, the conditions are as ripe as they have ever been for a showdown on the floor of a [GOP] Convention this summer." https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-at-a-disadvantage-in-a-brokered-convention-152052016.html](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErJKRuTXYAEMfG5.png "3/4/16 - \"With more than half the [GOP] opposed to frontrunner Donald Trump, yet also split between his three major remaining opponents, the conditions are as ripe as they have ever been for a showdown on the floor of a [GOP] Convention this summer.\" https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-at-a-disadvantage-in-a-brokered-convention-152052016.html")
6/2/16 - "House Speaker Paul D. Ryan on Thursday gave in to political pressure to support Donald Trump." https://www.yahoo.com/news/paul-ryan-caves-pressure-says-000000552.html
6/8/16 - "There is growing talk on the right of replacing Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president, and even chatter about a possible alternative." https://www.yahoo.com/news/talk-grows-replacing-trump-convention-000000790.html
6/27/16 - "Delegates give parties a safety valve by which to alter course before the fall election." https://www.yahoo.com/news/dump-trump-forces-succeed-doesn-000000378.html
7/12/16 - Mike Lee set to "cast a significant vote in the long-odds battle being waged by some Republican delegates to snatch the party’s presidential nomination from Donald Trump." https://www.yahoo.com/news/mike-lee-tea-party-senator-000000315.html
7/15/16 - anti-Trump forces outmanuvuered on convention rules committee. https://www.yahoo.com/news/mike-lee-says-rnc-put-000000606.html
7/16/16 - "That word — disorienting — described what it was like for me to see Republicans here who 4 months ago were sending me emails saying, “I hope he has a bad day” in Super Tuesday voting now making sure that the Rules Committee revolt went nowhere." https://www.yahoo.com/news/cleveland-dazed-gop-marches-toward-000000623.html
7/18/16 - Rick Gates threatens anti-Trump delegates on convention floor as RNC Chairman Reince Priebus leads the quelling of an attempt to open the convention nomination process. https://www.yahoo.com/news/chaos-on-the-floor-in-cleveland-how-an-insurgency-erupted-and-was-crushed-by-the-rnc-020846375.html
The RNC uses one of its last real instruments of power -- control of the convention -- to zombify itself. https://www.yahoo.com/news/rnc-donald-trump-party-power-000000290.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma
7/19/16 - Republicans rationalize that Trump will lose to Clinton so they can let him win the nomination and someone else will deal with their mess. "Nobody knows what happens to the party afterwards, presuming he loses." https://www.yahoo.com/news/rnc-donald-trump-party-power-000000290.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma
7/9/16 - A quote from David Broder from 1972: "Things have been happening in this country that I would not have believed...we have the instrument at hand, in the party system, that can break the long and costly impasse." https://www.yahoo.com/news/rnc-donald-trump-party-power-000000290.html?soc_src=mail&soc_trk=ma
“We like to believe that the fate of a government lies in the hands of its citizens. If the people hold democratic values, democracy will be safe … This view is wrong ... Put simply, political parties are democracy's gatekeepers." -- "How Democracies Die" https://play.acast.com/s/thelonggame/steven-levitsky-author-of-how-democracies-die
