The GOP divides

If the remaining Republican candidates for President are really focused on stopping Donald Trump, then Marco Rubio and John Kasich should now take the following three steps: 1--pledge to release their delegates after the first ballot at the GOP's national convention 2--select an arbitrator to lead the discussion of proposing a compromise candidate at the convention. Mitt Romney would be a reasonable choice for this role. 3-- divide the remaining state primaries between them, so that anti-Trump voters could be confident that their votes would help to reach this goal instead of canceling out.

Absent this, the GOP seems about to split in half. Tensions within the party used to look like a cluster of different perspectives, but now it seems more like two irreconcilable sides. On one side are the business-friendly folks who want international trade agreements, deregulation, cuts to corporate and capital gains taxes, immigration reform, criminal sentencing reform, deficit reduction, military preparedness and an interventionist defense policy. The other side is nativist and populist, and supports a protectionist trade policy, deportation of undocumented immigrants, cuts to social programs that benefit racial minorities, strict criminal sentencing, a foreign policy of isolationism punctuated by massive retaliation against enemy threats, and is hostile to all federal attempts to regulate money and trade.

The GOP has absorbed conservative white working class voters from throughout the US (not just the South), starting in the 1960s, when the Democratic Party embraced integration and affirmative action to redress racial inequality. Each subsequent Republican presidential aspirant has courted these voters, while also protecting corporate interests. But in the last eight years, the anti-government rhetoric among Republican officeholders and advocates has become so extreme that it is no longer possible to reconcile the two agendas. Senators Cruz and Rubio have tried to do this and largely failed to convince voters that they can be trusted. Donald Trump discovered that he could drive a wedge between angry voters and the party establishment, re-channeling Tea Party fervor to form an independent movement. There is more opposition than agreement between these two factions. I don't see how the GOP can continue to contain them both.