It wasn't that long ago when Republicans complained about participation trophies and how, at sporting events in schools, the ones who did not win still were acknowledged for their effort. They were complaining that it would make children weak, not want to compete, not give their best effort if they got recognition without being the top dog.

Now they demand their participation trophy and it better come with tendies!

Are these GOP lawmakers and analysts so spineless and beholden to Trump that they cannot discuss this as just one more - in a long list - of his failures?

Yes :)

They probably don't want their inboxes filled with bomb and rape threats from the very domestic terrorists they radicalized.

It really is a cesspool, they're tripling down now stating immigrants are eating pets, kidnapping kids in pedophile rings and then cannibalizing their victims. Total nutcase stuff.

It's just the_donald now.

The whole party got taken over by crazies, and all the normal people are realising and getting out.

Guess it's hard to argue about child starvation being a matter of personal responsibility when the person next to you is wearing a KKK hood with a swastika on it.

What did they expect, he’s so old… why do they make him keep running?

The thing that allowed the Democrats to switch candidates was that the Democratic National Convention had not happened yet, which is when the candidate is officially locked in as the party's candidate on ballots for president.

The Republican National Convention was mid July. Trump and Vance are locked in. To swap candidates now would be considerably more difficult for them (not to mention having to fight against a self centered toddler that will refuse to let anyone other than him run).

Swapping out candidates would be good for the Republicans. The process of swapping out candidates would not be.

meanwhile evangelicals made the pragmatic decision to vote for Trump, the least christian man in the whole GOP, because he furthers their anti-abortion agenda. I

Conservatives get abortions as soon as their own daughters get pregnant. They’re consummate hypocrites. Voting republican has always been about keeping workers deprived of rights and wage increases. No conservative gives a shit about the culture war stuff. The culture war is and has always been a distraction from creating welfare states like in EU.

They cannot swap him out because he will not cooperate. Attempting to swap him out would do nothing but split the vote for them.

Repubs have spent decades propagandizing their fear-addicted voters with racist delusions. Donald has taken over that mechanism.

The sane but sociopathic Repub leadership is experiencing the classic trope of a monster they thought was tame (the racist voters they have been agitating) turning on them (a dementia patient they have no control over blathering about eating cats during the debate).

He really can't drop out. He could be replaced but the legal maze of local and state deadlines and printed paper ballots that would have to be destroyed would abridge on early voting rights.

Rfk is having that problem right now in a few states. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/north-carolina-robert-kennedy-early-voting-trump-sabotage.html

He did say that he watched the news. If he didn’t prepared, how else would he have known about people eating cats? Checkmate liberals.

I'm surprised nobody is going after him for how low energy he was at the debate.

That was the least of his failings.

The blatant lying about pretty much everything is (and has always been) a much more serious problem with him.

Nah. Biden was old and tired. Trump is a bumbling insane person who was easily led by the nose. A strong woman of color made trump look incredibly weak to a base made up of racist whites. Trump was obviously the worst performance.