by Jack Kerwick | Apr 22, 2016

From virtually the time that this underdog entered the presidential race some ten months ago, Donald Trump has been the Republican Party’s presidential frontrunner.

For as much as the other candidates and their supporters may detest this fact, this is a fact.

Moreover, it is equally a fact that among his 17 competitors in the GOP race, no one has ever come remotely close to besting him.

In terms of the popular vote, Trump has left Ted Cruz, the first runner up, in the dust: The Manhattan businessman has elicited the support of millions of more voters than have rallied behind the politician from Texas. Trump also has a substantial lead over Cruz as far as delegate counts go.

Yet in spite of this—no, because of this—GOP loyalist insiders, including and especially Cruz, John Kasich, and every other Trumpphobe, are scheming for a contested convention in which the party, as opposed to its voters, will decide its nominee.

Some thoughts:

First, even if, for whatever reason, Trump does not receive his party’s nomination; even if, let’s say, he abandoned the race tomorrow, or, God forbid, he died, Trump still would’ve won.

To repeat: Donald Trump has won.

For years, traditional Republican voters have complained about “the Establishment,” about its failed promises, its “RINO” candidates, and its obsequiousness vis-à-vis the Democrats in D.C. and in the media.

Trump has gotten even for the rest of us.

Indeed, there is no exaggeration in saying of Trump that he’s dropped the political equivalent of a nuclear bomb upon the Establishment. While the GOP has been particularly upset by his break out candidacy, it’d be a lie to suggest that those who compose the other half of the axis that constitutes this Establishment is sleeping easily. They are not: Trump has unleashed a tsunami of indignation on the part of tens of millions of Americans who are at long last emboldened to resist the Politically Correct agenda of Washington D.C.

This Sleeping Giant has been awakened.

And it promises to remain awake—even long after Trump passes from the scene.

The irony here is that the more Republican politicians and their self-avowed “conservative” apologists in the media resist Trump, the more legions of Republican voters feel vindicated in having long-suspected that they exist to be taken for granted by opportunistic, manipulative politicians whose tough “conservative” talk never matches their post-election “moderate” PC walk. Consider that in no other election cycle has your average voter heard so much about “contested conventions,” “brokered conventions,” “bound delegates,” “unbound delegates,” “alternate delegates,” “first ballots, “second ballots,” and, of course, “the rules.”

Never before did your average Republican voter know about the monopoly of power over the selection of nominees possessed by party bosses.

Trump’s pulling back of the curtain on the Establishment’s machinations reveals as well the lengths to which they’ll go to maintain that monopoly. Those Republicans who would have us think that it’s a strike against Trump that a majority of primary GOP voters have not been supporting him are either dense or disingenuous, for while this is true, it’s no less true that he continues to win precisely because his base of support transcends his party.

snip

Yet it’s even more serious than this, for if the GOP creates “rules” designed to deprive the one person behind whom the overwhelming majority of voters have thrown their support, the one candidate with by far the largest number of delegates, then Republicans better be prepared to relinquish power across the board.

In short, if Trump loses the nomination by way of its trickery, then the Republican Party will lose for a long time to come.

http://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwi...as-won-n2152319