I will not vote for Donald Trump!

Donald Trump relishes wrecking the GOP

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The Republican process of picking Clinton's opponent already has, before the fourth delegate selection event, pruned the field from 17 to five, with only four — Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich, but not Ben Carson — with arguable paths to the nomination. Cruz is counting on volunteers wielding smartphones loaded with analytics — Boss Tweed meets Steve Jobs — to counter Trump's surfing on an endless wave of free media. Rubio needs Kasich, the only remaining governor, to wither while waiting for the process to reach states thought to be congenial.

Trump shatters the Republican Party

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Suddenly, there are three strands of Republicanism, each entrenched and vying for supremacy in 2016. Ted Cruz is the leader of the traditional conservative purists. Marco Rubio is emerging from the mud of a multicandidate brawl to lead the once-dominant, now diminished, mainstream lane of the GOP. But it is Trump’s new alliance of angry populists that is ascendant — and on the precipice of dominance.

Built on the backs of working-class men and women who feel abandoned, economically and culturally, Trump’s coalition has both brought in new voters and carved out support from the other two. Trump won over evangelicals from Cruz in South Carolina, and even more resoundingly again in Nevada. He then took moderates from the mainstream in New Hampshire and Nevada en route to landslide victories in three consecutive states.

“What Trump is consolidating is the people who are unhappy being in either camp — those who don’t see themselves as conservative insurgents or as mainstream Republicans,” said Yuval Levin, an influential Republican thinker and editor of the quarterly conservative journal National Affairs. “They’re insurgents but they’re not conservatives. And they’re not happy with the system that gave us that binary choice.” “It’s kind of Archie Bunker types,” said Glen Bolger, a veteran Republican pollster who is unaligned in 2016 but opposed to Trump

With God As My Witness, I Will Never Vote For Donald Trump.

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I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if he’s the Republican nominee.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley rise from the grave and beg me to support him.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, not even if it means he forms a third party and runs as the narcissist sociopath he truly is.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, no matter how many times the liberal media declares his inevitability and his immunity to scrutiny and attack or how many times the “conservative” media ignores his record and beliefs to fellate him on-air.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because he’s a pro-gun control, pro-single-payer health care, pro-eminent domain, pro-abortion, and pro-statism liberal who will immediately revert to form when he’s finished selling his fauxservatism to people he patently views as rubes.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, because absolutely nothing he can say or do will cover the fact he is obviously and blatantly lying every time his thin lips move and his freakishly tiny hands pound the podium.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because it’s utterly obvious that he lacks the temperament, judgment, and basic sanity to be placed as steward over 7,700 nuclear weapons and the rest of the awesome power of the United States military.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because he’s a draft-dodging blowhard who was chasing strange in Midtown when John McCain was having his arms broken by the Vietnamese.

I will never vote for Donald Trump to toe the “he’s my nominee” line because if he wins my party’s nomination it means the GOP has sold itself to a soulless, utterly unprincipled liberal narcissist bent on its destruction and that of conservatism.

I will never vote for Donald Trump, because it would require the complete abdication of every political value that informs my life; a reverence for the Constitution and the Republic and for limited-government conservative principles that shaped this nation and that continue to represent the only viable opposition to the galloping growth of the state.

I will never vote for Donald Trump because the solution to a Washington’s crony capitalism problems isn’t to elect an even more egregious and lavishly corrupt crony capitalist.

Cal Thomas: The 'itching ears' of Trump followers

Since religious language has again infected this unpredictable and turbulent political season, here is a verse that could describe the followers of Donald Trump. It is found in Paul’s second letter to his protege Timothy (or as Trump might call it, Two Timothy): "For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear."

All politicians tell voters what they want to hear. It is one reason for the anger many voters feel for members of both political parties. These voters believe Washington has let them down, promising things it has not, or cannot, deliver in exchange for their support.

Trump makes grandiose promises and claims he never backs up with facts. ... To followers of Trump it doesn't matter. Inaccuracies and the unlikelihood of making good on his promises are not as important as the thought behind them. This can be dangerous in a leader who aspires to power.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 2012, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, the CEO of Hogan Assessment Systems, a professor of Business Psychology at University College London and a faculty member at Columbia University, warns about "The Dark Side of Charisma." Noting "the short-term benefits of charisma are often neutralized by its long-term consequences,"

Chamorro-Premuzic lists four reasons for resisting charisma: "Charisma often dilutes judgment," it is "addictive," it "disguises psychopaths" and it "fosters collective narcissism." Despite the dangers, he says, "the dark side of charm is often overlooked."

Before the rise of Trump, one could point to President Obama as a recent example of the phenomenon. "In the era of multimedia politics," notes Chamorro-Premuzic, "leadership is commonly downgraded to just another form of entertainment and charisma is indispensable for keeping the audience engaged."

A characteristic of Trump's followers appears to be their determination to ignore any evidence that would challenge their faith. And so when I question the reality show-style of Trump, I get messages on social media calling me a "sack of (excrement)," a member of the "establishment" and "old," which is the unkindest cut of all.

Remember when age used to go with wisdom, unless proven otherwise? If you're a millennial reading this, perhaps you have no memory of such a time. Trump may well win the Republican nomination and even the presidency. If he does, it will confirm that the transformation of American politics -- from serious business, to another form of entertainment -- is complete and the White House will become the biggest reality show of them all.