George Will is warning that if the GOP nominates Donald Trump for president, it would be the “end” of the Republican Party.
“Conservatives’ highest priority now must be to prevent Trump from winning the Republican nomination in this, the GOP’s third epochal intraparty struggle in 104 years,” he writes in a new Washington Post column Thursday.
The conservative columnist says preventing Trump from winning the nomination should be an even higher priority than denying the Democratic Party a third term in the White House.
{mosads}“One hundred and four years of history is in the balance. If Trump is the Republican nominee in 2016, there might not be a conservative party in 2020 either.”
Will pans the GOP front-runner as a “fundamentally sad figure,” arguing that he has every “disagreeable human trait.”
“His compulsive boasting is evidence of insecurity. His unassuageable neediness suggests an aching hunger for others’ approval to ratify his self-admiration,” Will writes. “His incessant announcements of his self-esteem indicate that he is not self-persuaded.”
Noting Trump’s recent platitudes for Russian President Vladimir Putin, he compares the real estate tycoon’s actions to “a puppy’s insatiable eagerness to be petted.”
He also criticizes Trump’s dismissal of allegations that Putin has had Russian journalists killed, and for suggesting a moral equivalency between Putin’s government and the United States.
It’s far from the first time Will has taken to the page to bash Trump, with columns that have provoked the ire of the GOP front-runner. In November, Trump tweeted that Will should be thrown off Fox News because he is “boring and totally biased.”