There is an excerpt from Michael Wolff’s upcoming book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House where Wolff reports that Trump did not want to be president and that he and his people fully expected to lose. The gist of the story is that Trump and others ran the campaign as a method of creating branding, expanding media connections, and in general as a moneymaking operation. (Wolff also reports that Trump went through a number of stages of shock and fear before becoming certain that he was going to be a great president. He lacks nothing in grandiose self-image that is not backed up by anything resembling talent, intelligence, or taste.)

Now some have taken issue with Wolff’s report and poked holes where the details do not align with history so we’ll have to wait a bit longer for that judgment. However I find it entirely credible that Trump at least started the campaign as a moneymaking and image enhancing

The Republican Party has allowed charlatans and grifters access to the presidential nominating process, business people, second tier politicians turned TV personalities, and flash in the pan conservative celebrities flooded the fields, turning the solemn and serious affair of selecting the person to lead the most powerful nation on earth into a cash grab and celebrity stepping stone platform.

It’s really should not have been a surprise that eventually this charade, coupled with a base that had been purified to that rejected facts for ideology, would eventually shove aside any serious politician for the flashier, louder, and most grandiose snake-oil pusher.

This is the doom that the GOP has visited upon America and on the world. This is the end result of their cynicism, their abandonment of principal, and the surrendering of all their honor.

There are a lot of things in traditional conservative thought that are worth considering, worth valuing, worth upholding, but covered in gold plated, celebrity apprentice crap, it all becomes crap.

The nation needs a new conservative party.