Jeb!'s brother, George!, is worried he'll be the last Republican President

In a story chronicling what it calls the GOP's 2016 "shadow convention," the Politico claims to have sources that would confirm what a lot of us believe. Namely; the top brass within the party, those guys who despise the conservative grass roots and long for the good ol' days when the rest of us just shut our mouths and did what we were told, are very much expecting to lose in the fall. In fact, they've planning on it for some time. The theory goes like this: Once it became clear that establishment figures like Jeb! couldn't be sold as a viable candidate, they opted to go scorched-earth. They'd lose in spectacular fashion, use the loss to berate conservatives, and focus on the midterms and 2020.

“There’s a school of thought that Trump, who’s gonna get crushed, will somehow teach the party a lesson and they’ll get it out of their system,” said Stuart Stevens, who was Mitt Romney’s chief strategist in 2012. “I don’t have confidence in that.” Indeed, many are already at work to rearrange the fractured pieces to their liking—and advantage.

If that was the only quote they had, it would be no big deal. Of course people are preparing for what happens after a potential loss. That only makes sense. The problem, however, is that they seem to be looking forward to it...

“The day after the election we’ll get back to being the anti-Clinton party,” said Alex Conant, a veteran Republican strategist and longtime Rubio adviser. “Which we’re actually good at being.” “We’ll have a really good midterm,” he predicted, and a deep bench for 2020.

In other words: Since they're incapable of putting together a positive winning agenda, they're happy to sit back and carp while Hillary guts the Constitution for the next four years. In short (and you'll have to pardon my French) they've grown so accustomed to bitching at Clintons, they now prefer it to electing someone who might point out their failures and make life difficult for them. If all goes to plan, Trump will lose, they'll have a jolly time saying "I told you so," and then they can rebuild - free of those pesky anti-establishment folks. This, of course, is why they've been losing for the last 25 years. They're comfortable playing small ball, and they're too cowardly to mount any sort of real fight. ...So you get candidates like McCain, Dole, and Romney. What about Bush, you ask? Well, fine. He won twice. But they were two extremely narrow victories against two of the worst candidates in DNC history. What should have been easy wins were, as usual, turned into nail biters by a party that refuses to embrace the will of its base. Now, according to the Politico's sources, Bush worries he'll be the "last Republican President."

When it came to talk of 2016, though, the mood was grim. The Republican primary had just narrowed to essentially two choices, each anathema to these card-carrying members of the GOP establishment: Ted Cruz and, even more egregiously, Donald Trump. But few were as dark about the Republican Party’s future as former President Bush himself. In a more intimate moment during the reunion, surrounded by a smaller clutch of former aides and advisers, Bush weighed in with an assessment so foreboding that some who relayed it could not discern if it was gallows humor or blunt realpolitik. “I’m worried,” Bush told them, “that I will be the last Republican president.”

If that comes to pass, the party will have - at least in part - the Bush administration and the Rove machine to thank for it.

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