The speech that could dump Trump

Rush Limbaugh made an interesting point. Regarding how to shut down the Donald, he said that there is no major Conservative figure with the moral authority to stand up and say to Republican voters, "this man cannot be our nominee. You must not vote for him. And here's why..." He argues that the Party Establishment has been so feckless and tone deaf over the last two decades that the voters have simply tuned them out and are now flocking to the Donald in a pique of "screw you."

I think he's almost right...  there is one exception.

George W. Bush

(and a righteous howl of rage and indignation rose up over the Internet such that children covered their ears in pain and flocks of birds took wing in sheer terror)

Yeah yeah I know, but stay with me here. I'm not saying Bush could step to the podium and heal all our party divisions with one sentence. But I do think there is a speech in him that could solve this. Here's what I think it would sound like:

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My fellow Republicans,

We need to have a conversation about where we are as a party. I have never been more excited about the future of the Republican Party. I look at our outstanding field of Candidates and Party leaders and I see the future. I see two Cuban-Americans whose personal stories are literally the story of America. Both are the product of working class parents who came to this country to escape large oppressive Governments and the tyranny of Socialism so that their children could have a chance at a brighter future. And now two of those children sit a hair's breadth away from the Presidency. That's an incredible story that could only have happened here.  I see a brilliant businesswoman who is the embodiment of the American dream. A woman who started her career as a secretary and worked her way up to CEO of one of the largest and most forward thinking tech companies in the world... another amazing story that must be filed under "only in America." I see Governors who have led States like Texas to economic success that has dwarfed what many thought possible in the face of a massive recession, Governors who have broken racial and ethnic barriers in states like Louisiana, and Governors who have broken through iron-strong blue walls of power in historically Democratic States like New Jersey.

Across the aisle, on the Democratic side, I see a stale past. Old... white... tired. The same failed ideas of Socialism and Big Government that have brought us to this sad place of weakness abroad and economic disaster at home.

We should be killing them. But we aren't, and we won't... not as long as Donald Trump is our front runner.

To those of you who support Donald Trump I want to say this. I understand the message you're sending. I do. You're angry. You're angry that for twenty years the establishment leaders of your party, backed by corporate interests and big money donors, have tried to force upon you things that you hate. Things like open borders and Amnesty. Things like more and more spending and bigger and more frightening levels of National Debt. And worse, when The Democrats and their media allies have called you racist, or backwards, or small-minded for opposing those policies, those same Establishment leaders have not had your back. They have caved in the face of false charges of racism and sexism and selfishness over-and-over again, and it has been nothing short of disgraceful. You want someone to fight for you, to demand that our leaders stop accusing you of dark and evil motivations. To say dammit, this is NOT how you treat people who are your fellow countrymen and who have legitimate concerns about the direction in which this country is headed.

Instead we fought for our own entrenched interests.

Yes I said "We". I understand your anger and frustration because I am partly responsible for it. You have been asking for smaller less-intrusive Government, better security abroad, and safer borders for two decades and we have not listened. It's become an article of faith in the media that the Tea Party was created in racist opposition to the first African-American President, but that is an awful lie. The Tea Party was born under my leadership. It was a reaction to MY policies, not Barack Obama's. And I should have listened. We all should have listened. That's on me...

It's on all of us.

You have done nothing wrong except believe passionately in your nation's potential. We have done just about everything wrong. And I'm sorry as hell about it. There's not much I can do about all that now except to say that I do not believe that it's too late to fix this... to heal the rift that has sprung up between us. But we cannot fix it with Donald Trump as our nominee.

I believe Donald Trump will destroy this party. I believe it in my heart. It's not just that I think he would lose to any Democratic nominee in a landslide, though I certainly think that's true. It is that he will squander an historic opportunity to expand the tent under which the Party ought to be thriving. He will give the Democratic Party and their media allies cover to expand upon the vicious lie that Republicans are racist, sexist and backward. It's not true. It's never been true. But I promise you this, they'll do it, and it will work.

And we will lose.

I used to work in Baseball. Baseball is unique among sports because it carries with it a set of rules that don't appear in the rule book, but that are just as iron-clad as the rule saying three strikes and you're out. Politics is a lot like that. The unwritten rules of Politics say I'm not supposed to be giving this speech. It's unseemly for a former President to speak out against a sitting President, much less to speak out against the front-runner of his own Party's nominating process.

But these times we live in are extraordinary. We face challenges that the people who agreed upon those unwritten rules could never have imagined. We face a National Debt so large that it can never be paid back. Think about that. We can never pay back our National Debt. What does that even mean for our future? No one really knows, and no one seems to care... certainly not Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders. We are still a year away from the Presidential election and already both Candidates have proposed programs that, while they may buy votes, would also add trillions of dollars to our debt.

Trillions.

We face an enemy so evil it burns people alive and drowns them in cages. An enemy that rapes and murders captive women because they don't share the same faith. An enemy that even now is looking for ways to kill as many Americans as possible in attacks on our homeland. Believe me when I tell you this because I've seen the intelligence... if they could get their hands on a nuclear weapon and set it off in New York City tomorrow, they would. And they may yet.

One hundred million Americans are out of the work force. Put another way, one third of the nation is not working... an historic number. Another fifty million are on food stamps. The Democrats like to talk about sustainable systems... does that sound sustainable to you?

Like sugary sweets, Donald Trump says things that make us feel good. "I'm gonna build a wall." "I'll bomb the shit out of ISIS" (his words, not mine). But the things that make us feel good are rarely good for us. Donald Trump is not a serious man. He's certainly not a Conservative, this man who once supported in thought, word, and deed, the Woman he now claims he would run against and defeat.

He is an entertainer. He is a master showman and I don't know that anyone has ever been better at manipulating the media than he. But he cannot be our nominee.

My fellow citizens, we must not vote for this man. We cannot. Anger is not the same thing as sound policy. We have an historic opportunity to grow our party under the leadership of a smart, sober, and thoughtful leader. Let's seize it. We must... for if we travel down that other path... well, that way lies madness.

Thank you. good night, and may God bless the United States of America.