This morning Breitbart’s John Nolte published a piece called, Kristol Lays Out Strategy to Give White House to Hillary: Trump ‘Shouldn’t Win’

In order to defeat Donald Trump,  The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol admits he is prepared to hand Hillary Clinton the Oval Office. On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe,” the Republican Establishment leader laid out his plot to deprive Trump of the 50% of delegates necessary to secure the nomination. From there, the idea is to go into a brokered convention and cut a kamikaze deal that awards enough delegates to an “acceptable” candidate (who will have won far fewer votes, states, and delegates than Trump).

The problem with the Establishment brokering a behind-closed-door deal that hands the nomination to a Sen. Marco Rubio, is that the backlash against the Republican Party is almost certain to hand Hillary Clinton the presidency.

That outcome – a Hillary Clinton presidency – is just fine, actually preferred, by Kristol:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: The fact of the matter is that you know there is no historical precedent with someone doing as well as Candidate Trump did yesterday — winning New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, [losing the nomination] has never happened before, and as you know there is a momentum, a forward progress–

BILL KRISTOL: Right, so we have to stop the momentum, I totally agree.

SCARBOROUGH: So that’s my question. There’s no cheering here. I am looking at facts.

KRISTOL: To your credit, you have correctly seen that this was not going to be the historically normal year, and it’s not, so maybe we go–

SCARBOROUGH: So how do you beat him?

KRISTOL: You have to beat him in Florida and Ohio, the first two winner-take-all states, which means there has to be a de facto agreement between the opposition candidates — between the resistance to Trump, which I am proud to be a part of, because I think he’d be a terrible nominee and a terrible president…

SCARBOROUGH: You have the authority to broker that deal right now?

KRISTOL: Well, they need to. They need to defer to Rubio in Florida and probably to Kasich in Ohio, and say, or imply, that if you are a Cruz voter in Ohio, and if you look up the day before the primary and it’s Trump 42%, Kasich 35% — vote for Kasich. And the truth is if Trump doesn’t win Florida and Ohio, it remains very much of an open race. …

Watch the video of the Morning Joe segment:

You might wonder, as I have, WHY any Republican would set up circumstances that would hand the election to the opposition party (because voters will stay home, in droves this time), rather than promote the nominee that the people have named as their candidate. I mean, other than believing that they “know better” who would be the better man for President. Of course, it’s self-interest, rather than concern for the country and its people.

I ran across this article from last Spring that you may find as interesting as I did, comparing today’s Establishment members of the Republican Party to the government in France – known as the Vichy Government – during WWII. Craig Shirley explains in Real Clear Politics:

Lost amid the exaggerated romance of the French Resistance lies the truth of the Nazi occupation of France during World War II: Thousands of French people resisted the invaders; many paid with their lives. Yet it’s also true that of all the Nazi-occupied countries, only Vichy France was allowed self-rule. And five French divisions marched with the Germans against the Allies.

The modern Republican Party can also be divided between the principled political warriors and those who prefer accommodation. These two factions have little in common culturally or ideologically. The main factor holding them together is a shared aversion to President Obama. But he will soon leave the stage, and it is questionable whether Hillary Clinton—or any other Democrat—will try so hard to earn the ire of Republicans.

Mr. Shirley goes on to detail the history of the Republican Party’s electoral successes, exactly what they have done to our country, how they have rewarded their cronies to the detriment of the rest of us, and where we are now – a place we have been before.

This fight is not new. In November of 1975, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan announced he would challenge the incumbent president, Gerald Ford, in the GOP primaries. Reagan was taking on more than Ford; he was taking on the culture of Washington.

“In my opinion, the root of these problems lies right here in Washington, D.C. Our nation’s capital has become the seat of a buddy system that functions for its own benefit—increasingly insensitive to the needs of the American worker who supports it with his taxes,” Reagan said. “Today, it is difficult to find leaders who are independent of the forces that brought us our problems—the Congress, the bureaucracy, the lobbyists, big business and big labor. If America is to survive and go forward, this must change.”

And here we are again, the cycle continues, with those who masquerade as “conservatives” continuing to govern as the elites, only concerned with the interests of themselves and their friends, and pretending to know “what is best” for the great unwashed (that’s us).

On issue after issue, from abortion to trade to the Ex-Im Bank to Obamacare, the insiders invariably argue for “compromise.” They offer various explanations for why pragmatism is necessary “this time,” promising they will stand and fight “next time.” Next time never comes, though, except for the insiders’ corporate paymasters. They always pay on time.

As a Facebook friend commented this morning,

…. last time around the sticking point for millions of voters was Obamacare and the GOPe punditry pushed the creator of Romney care–this time around it’s immigration and they wanted Jeb or Rubio. the base responds as it should, “Guess which finger we’re holding up?”

And as John Nolte said, in his article:

This is a good time to ask where this scorch-earthed mentality was when America needed it most to stop Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.