Is Trump Now The Republicans' Establishment-Lane Candidate?

Judging by Wednesday’s morning headlines about the not necessarily dependable new polling, the main stream media seems to be all set to declare Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump went so far to declare that Trump “is now the Republican Party’s establishment-lane candidate“:

Donald Trump will have led in Real Clear Politics’ polling average nationally, save a day or two when he was tied with Ben Carson, for precisely seven months this Saturday — the day he is likely to win South Carolina’s Republican primary on a perhaps-unstoppable run to the nomination.

How’d he do that? Weirdly enough, by becoming the choice of the Republican center — the group that was supposed to be trying to pick among Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie right about now.

A new poll from Quinnipiac University shows how the field has evolved since December, back when there were 14 Republicans to ask about, not six. Trump jumped from 28 percent support to 39 percent, essentially absorbing the equivalent support of those eight candidates who dropped out. (Those eight totaled 12 percent of support in December.)

[. . .]When Christie, Carly Fiorina and all those others dropped out, the long-term beneficiary appears to have been Trump, the candidate who has locked down that less strident wing of the Republican Party to which Bush once aspired.

We saw this morphing of Trump into the Establishment coming. It is happening despite Trump still being the candidate whom the largest number of Republicans find unacceptable, Trump’s unfavorable rating being higher than any Democrat or Republican nominee ever and after months and months of the Establishment saying Trump would not and could not be the nominee because of his bellicose and hateful campaign rhetoric. This is what the GOP Establishment seems to do best these days. They say one thing and then do the opposite. It’s just so like the Establishment to choose to back Trump.

It pretty much serves the Republican Establishment right that they may now be lumped together with Trump. The Establishment deserves it because they created the environment which a candidate such as The Donald could even become a thing. Sen.Ted Cruz explained how that came to better than anyone last July on the floor of the Senate:

There is a profound disappointment among the American people because we keep winning elections and then we keep getting leaders who don’t do anything they promised …

We’ve had a Republican majority in both houses of Congress now for about six months. What has that majority done? First thing we did, in December, is we came back and passed a $1 trillion ‘Cromnibus’ plan filled with pork and corporate welfare. That was the very first thing we did. Then this Republican majority voted to fund ObamaCare, voted to fund President Obama’s unconstitutional executive amnesty. And then leadership rammed through the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as attorney general. Madam President, which of those decisions would be one iota different if Harry Reid were still majority leader? Not a one. Not a one. This Senate operates exactly the same — the same priorities…

After months of denouncing Trump the GOP Establishment has warmed up to the Donald and, along with the main stream media, seems ready to embrace Trump as Establishment. Now instead of a TEA Party, we have a mob of middle finger voters supporting Trump.