The dying throes of the GOP establishment

When all else fails, send in ... Mitt Romney.

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will deliver a scorching indictment of Donald Trump on Thursday, calling the candidate a “phony” and a “fraud” who’d threaten America’s future. 

Romney is due to speak Thursday in Utah at the Hinckley Institute of Politics Forum on the state of the 2016 presidential race. Already a vocal critic of Trump, excerpts released ahead of the speech show Romney will go a step further in his attacks on the Republican frontrunner.

Gravitas.  I have great confidence that Trumpers and Trumpettes alike will respond favorably to the slings and arrows being slung and shot by the Man of 47% of The People.

Okay, moneymen: now it's your turn.

Wall Street is getting ready to go nuclear on Donald Trump. 

Terrified that the reality TV star could run away with the Republican nomination and bring his brand of anti-immigrant, protectionist populism to the White House, some top financiers are writing big checks to fund an effort to deny Trump a majority of delegates to the GOP convention. 

The effort is centered on the recently formed Our Principles PAC, the latest big-money group airing anti-Trump ads, which is run by GOP strategist Katie Packer, deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney in 2012. 

The group, initially funded by $3 million from Marlene Ricketts, wife of billionaire T.D. Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, wants to saturate the expensive Florida airwaves ahead of the state’s March 15 primary with hopes of denying Trump a victory that could crush the hopes of home state Sen. Marco Rubio. 

A conference call on Tuesday to solicit donors for the group included Paul Singer, billionaire founder of hedge fund Elliott Management; Hewlett Packard President and CEO Meg Whitman; and Chicago Cubs co-owner Todd Ricketts, one of Joe and Marlene Ricketts’ three sons. Wealthy Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein is also expected to help fund the effort. Jim Francis, a big GOP donor and bundler from Texas, was also on the phone call on Tuesday.

Just remember their names.  They are the poster children for a post-Citizens United world gone horribly wrong (in their opinion).  Whoever thought buying politicians would be so difficult?

You just can't hire good help.

This person said Singer, who is worth close to $2 billion, is fully dedicated to making sure the group has all the funds it needs to inundate the airwaves in Florida and other states viewed as not entirely friendly to Trump, a group that includes Illinois, Missouri, Arizona, Wisconsin and other states in the Northeast and West. Ohio could join the list if Trump moves ahead of the state’s governor, John Kasich, in the polls. 

“The money is not going to be a problem. We will raise what we need to do what we need to do,” the person close to the new anti-Trump PAC said. “Yes, there are people who are skeptical, but there are just as many ready to write big checks. The question is only whether Trump truly is really Teflon.” 

The theory, this person said, is that voters are still largely unaware of the full case against Trump. “We have not seen how he holds up to real sustained attacks over the KKK and David Duke stuff, over Trump University, over Trump Mortgage. People don’t really know about that stuff. We are about to find out what happens when they find out about it.”

Good luck ... I guess.  It's not personal; it's strictly business.

The pitch to Wall Street titans and other CEOs is that a President Trump would be disastrous for markets and the economy. Many economists say that if the U.S. were to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants in a single year, the immediate hit to gross domestic product would lead to a depression. And slapping massive tariffs on goods from Mexico and China could dramatically increase prices for U.S. consumers and create destabilizing trade wars. “The most important thing about Trump is, he is completely unpredictable and volatile, and the one thing business needs is predictability,” Packer said. 

But prosecuting that case will take tens of millions of dollars spread across multiple states. 

And many Wall Street donors are already burned out after pumping over $100 million to Jeb Bush and his Right to Rise super PAC with nothing to show for it. Wall Street’s support is also splintered among candidates at the moment. Singer is backing Rubio. Financiers Stanley Druckenmiller and Ken Langone are backing Kasich. And many senior executives say trying to stop Trump now is a foolish crusade that will wind up burning cash with nothing to show for it.

Buyer's remorse on Jeb!  Who would have ever believed?

The one thing most of Wall Street agrees on at this point is that Trump’s grasp of economic policy is weak at best. And should he manage to defeat likely Democratic nominee Clinton in the fall, already turbulent markets could go completely haywire.
“[Trump] has a kindergarten view of economics. The man says China is manipulating currency. China is in the biggest currency run in history, they’re losing $100 billion a month,” Druckenmiller said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Wednesday morning. “He doesn’t know what he is talking about. The stuff that comes out his mouth just astonishes me.” 

Other Wall Street analysts say the biggest risk from Trump is that no one really knows what his core beliefs really are. And it is not clear what kind of people he might appoint to critical jobs in his administration. Trump thus far has floated only billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn as a possible economic adviser in his administration.

Someone buy these suits a copy of Idiocracy, for crine out loud.

It's not going to work, but it will be most amusing to watch them try.  Here is your buried lede:

That leaves many Wall Street Republicans with the same conundrum as naional party leaders: Figure out a way to make peace with Trump, pray for an independent bid by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg or quietly hope Clinton wins the general election in November. 

Clinton has many supporters on Wall Street — something that has complicated her primary campaign against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — and plenty of Republicans who don’t like her would still prefer her to Trump. “I could never support Hillary,” the Wall Street executive who raised money for Bush said. “But plenty of my friends will just hold their nose and vote for her.”

Ahahahahaha.  And people say that Democrats and Republicans aren't alike.