If you ever attempt to manage anything complicated you will have to figure out what to do about risks. Risks can be roughly defined as things that could go wrong and give you a problem. Once they do go wrong, they become issues. Then you have a problem on your hands. The political leadership of the GOP has failed at risk management. They now have an issue on their hands; THE DONALD.

You know who thinks we should be perfectly willing to shut down DC to stop Planned Parenthood? OK, that was a gimme. You know who else claims to believe the exact same thing? THE DONALD. Oh my, how convenient. Nobody cognizant of Donald Trump’s previous support of legalized abortion should be intellectually convinced that THE DONALD means what he is saying. He doesn’t have to. He is serving a potential customer base. He’s arbitraging the GOP voter base right out from under them because the GOP failed to evaluate and manage that risk. Now, he is no longer a risk. He is an issue.

THE DONALD is able to effectively arbitrage based on the desire on the part of the American people that the priorities and policies of President Barack Obama get put under a hash microscope and opposed when they deviate from decency and reason. The GOP is either rightly or wrongly seen as failing to adequately serve that demand. In some cases, they are portrayed in deliberately engaging in Failure Theatre to avoid facing tough fights that are strategically or tactically difficult in the current environment. A harsher critique (#cuckservative)* would be that the GOP is merely a Potemkin opposition that only pretends to oppose the DC status quo in return for a rake-off. It matters not if the actual truth is defined by these critiques. It matters how much truth GOP base voters believe is portrayed by these disparaging critiques of the current GOP leadership.

This, therefore, allows the Donald to opportunistically promise to do the GOP’s job for them and take away a large swath of the GOP voters. Will it be enough to even elect Hillary? It will be if an issue mitigation strategy isn’t put into effect. That strategy is as follows. It is no longer legitimately sufficient to tell us what we would do absent Obama in the White House. We have to attempt it with him there and make him stop it or get out of the way. The GOP gained when it shut down the government to plug President Obama’s poisonous priorities.

Governor Scott Walker is leading the way on this. He has taken on the unions, he has stripped Planned Parenthood’s Title V government funding. He now has to finish the job and get the Title X funds as well. Governor Jindal killed a Planned Parenthood contract with Louisiana and Rick Perry challenged the forthcoming Obama EPA ruling that would curtail the availability of energy. [mc_name name=’Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’P000603′ ] at least tried to strip Planned Parenthood’s Federal monies.**

These are the types of legitimate Conservative opposition to the current regime that will defang THE DONALD and convince potential GOP primary goers that the GOP still actually believes differently than the Democrats. That is the key to handling the issue known as THE DONALD.

*- Yes, they’re the type of people who wish we could engage in ethnic cleansing, but they still are gaining cache and have to be effectively addressed.

**-But with friends like [mc_name name=’Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL)’ chamber=’senate’ mcid=’K000360′ ], who needs an enema?