By triggering a "civil war" in their own party, the Republican leaders in the United States are actually paving the way for the realisation of their worst nightmare: Hillary Clinton taking over the White House in November..
This prognosis was drawn up by Michael T. Snyder, the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and author of "The Beginning of the End."
Writing for Charisma News, Synder notes that the in-fighting in the Republican Party revolves around brash billionaire Donald Trump, the current presidential front-runner who is openly despised by party leaders.
At this point in the race, Trump is well ahead of his three remaining rivals—Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich. Following his string of victories in the primaries and caucuses, Trump has now won 384 delegates while Cruz has 300, Rubio 151 and Kasich 37.
So far, Trump has won approximately 44 percent of the delegates and needs to win more than 60 percent of the delegates in the upcoming caucuses and primaries to be able to accumulate the minimum 1,237 delegates needed to guarantee himself the nomination before the Republican convention, Synder says.
Trump can get these delegates by winning the races in winner-take-all states such as Florida and California. However, Synder says the Republican party establishment is out to deny him this.
"Fox News, Glenn Beck and a significant number of other prominent conservative voices have all declared war on Trump," he writes. "In fact, there are super PACs that are going to spend tens of millions of dollars doing nothing but trying to destroy Trump."
Synder says if the Republican Party really wanted to beat Clinton in November, party leaders "should be rallying around Trump and trying to help him, because he would definitely need a lot of help to win the general election."
But this is not happening.
As it is, the latest three polls all have Trump losing to Clinton by at least 5 points, according to Real Clear Politics.
In the next few months, Synder expects those numbers to get even worse as Trump is attacked viciously by the Republican establishment while Clinton cruises to victory in the Democratic race.
Even if "by some miracle," Trump becomes the GOP nominee, the attacks on him by his own party would have significantly weakened him by the time he faces the "full power of the Clinton political machine" in November, Synder says.
"In a general election matchup, it really would be David vs. Goliath, and Trump would not be Goliath," he says.
If Trump does not get the minimum 1,237 delegates before the convention, he would then face a "brokered convention," which "would almost certainly result in an establishment candidate being chosen as the nominee," Synder says, adding that Trump and Cruz would not be that nominee.
Synder suspects that Mitt Romney, the last GOP presidential candidate who lost to President Barack Obama in 2012, would be "drafted" to become the nominee at the Republican convention.
"If Romney does emerge as the nominee, does anyone actually believe that he will defeat Clinton? Of course not. Trump's millions of supporters will be absolutely infuriated, and many of them would absolutely refuse to cast a vote for Romney in the general election.
"In the end, it would be the same result—a victory for Hillary Clinton," Synder says.
