The GOP's shadow convention.

He has solidified himself as an erratic, underfunded and scattershot candidate, plagued by staff turmoil and missed opportunities. In the run-up to the convention, he sued a former aide for $10 million. He canceled his vice-presidential announcement citing a terror attack in France, went on cable news and declared America to be in a world war and then announced his pick at the original time slot anyway on Twitter. Within hours, Trump was rocked by leaks from within his inner circle about his own late-night waffling on the single most significant decision a presidential candidate can make.

But it is the rise of Trump’s divisive style and embrace of white resentment politics—anchored by proposals for a wall to keep Mexicans out, an immigration ban preventing Muslims from coming in and talk of cheating by China and ripping up trade deals—that has many of the Republican Party’s elders, privately and publicly, predicting defeat this fall at the hands of a diversifying electorate and fretting about long-term fallout.

In interviews with more than 40 of the Republican Party’s leading strategists, lawmakers, fundraisers and donors, a common thread has emerged heading into the general election: Win or lose in November (and more expect to lose than not), they fear that Trump’s overheated and racialized rhetoric could irreparably poison the GOP brand among the fastest-growing demographic groups in America.

And so, to an almost unprecedented extent, as the 50,000 Republican activists, officials and media pour into Cleveland this week, there is something of a convention within the convention. Many of these GOP titans—the intellectual and financial pillars of the party and its possible future elected leaders—are plotting a parallel course.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/rnc-2016-gop-republican-party-leaders-future-donald-trump-214065#ixzz4ErfFsquf





In other words,the GOP elite have already written off 2016 as a loss and are now trying to save their party.