By John Christen 

Jeb Bush dropped out of — or should I say, was bullied out of — the presidential race on Feb. 20. Despite having raised over $100 million in super-PAC funds as the inevitable nominee a year ago, Bush submitted to the rancorous verbal stoning of his former Floridian protege, Marco Rubio, as well as America’s favorite bigot, Donald Trump. Maybe Bush could not stand being called “a disgrace to his family” or “the little sheep” of the Republican race again by Trump any longer. Or, perhaps Bush sensed the indubitable success of the embarrassingly underqualified, yet appealing real-estate mogul.

Four Republican presidential candidates are left, and to some, Trump’s nomination is inevitable. As of March 6, he has the largest number of delegates won in the 2016 Republican primaries. This coming week will feature some of the largest single-state primary delegate contests, with standouts like Rubio’s home state on March 15.

Trump has the edge. He has an undeniably concrete advantage over his rivals in the primaries so far. Though lately, it seems that the entire educated community of traditional conservatives has decided to revolt.

The establishment Republican members are doing everything in their power to prevent Trump’s freight-train of a campaign from succeeding. Just this past Thursday (March 3), Mitt Romney delivered a speech with the intent of discrediting Trump, citing Trump’s numerous incidents of racist, misogynistic, xenophobic and bigoted rhetoric and behavior. After his impassioned tirade against the Republican front-runner, Romney correctly predicted that Trump would respond swiftly, and crassly, to his remarks.

One could cite the disgusting, immature language of Trump in an attempt to convince his dedicated supporters to see reason, yet his suggestive wording falls towards the bottom of my concerns. Not only did Trump avoid any attempt to defend himself against Romney’s claims, but he also failed to even mention them at his Portland, Maine rally on Thursday or the Fox Republican debate that night. Trump has silently acknowledged the inherent truth of Romney and other members of the newly founded Trump-opposition’s allegations. This is seriously alarming. Even more alarming is the public’s ignorance of the gravity of Trump’s rhetoric.

His fellow Republican candidates, notably Rubio and Cruz, tag-teamed in a Trump-style, low-blow moment during the debate that hardly touched his momentum. In a way only he could, Trump was able to allude to the size of his genitals in a response to Rubio’s hilariously unprofessional jab at Trump’s hand-size. The Republican candidates, besides John Kasich, all looked unprofessional, immature and unfit to perform the duties of any public office.

Trump’s main supporters are the people that feel they have lost their political voice. Many of these people want Trump because he says what others will not say, and because they believe he intends to radically change the political system that has taken their voice away. Trump supporters are angry. They like the fact that Trump is scapegoating minorities and justifying xenophobic tendencies. According to the Atlantic, many of his supporters are people without a college education, feel as though their voice is lost, intend to wage internal war against immigrants and live in parts of the country with racial resentment. This is not to say that this defines any one Trump supporter, but it definitely says something about those to whom he appeals.

The registered voters of the United States of America need to do some serious self-reflection. Do we want a president who won the 2016 election by capitalizing on the most animalistic, impulsive tendencies of the American public and bullying other candidates out of the race? Do we want a president who advocates for the murder of terrorists’ families, reluctantly disavows former Ku Klux Klan grand wizards and fully supports Vladimir Putin, the Russian President whose regime has killed thousands more Syrian civilians and Kurdish rebels than members of ISIS in its 2016 bombing campaign? Maybe we want a president who will single-handedly dismantle the political system of the most successful democracy on the planet. If you find yourself desiring one or more of these things, then please, vote for Donald Trump.

John Christen, FCRH’19, is undeclared in his major from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.