Column by Gary Wisenbaker

FT. WAYNE, Ind.—As the “#NeverTrump” movement dissipates like the morning mist before a rising sun, the nascent certainty of a Donald Trump nomination as the Republican candidate for president gains strength.

Yet there are still detractors detached from this reality.

One of the most respected voices for the conservative cause, establishment centric George Will, for example, recently opined that it was nothing short of the GOP’s rank and file’s bounden duty to insure Mr. Trump’s defeat should he become the party’s standard bearer in November since it’s inevitable regardless of any efforts to the contrary.

Talk about self-fulfilling prophesies.

Such an embrace of defeat before casting the first vote in the fall campaign exhibits the exact strategic paradigm of the present GOP ruling class in Washington: surrender before even challenging the Democratic-Socialists.

They, like Mr. Will, now the chief apologist for an unhinged establishment, operate out of fear.

Mr. Will’s fear concerns the redefinition of a carefully constructed definition of what is “conservative”. Such a reconstruction, coming from those other than the movement’s traditional guardians, is, well, quite distressing.

And as fear is the catalyst that makes false evidence appear real, so are the assumptions underpinning the case warning against a Trump nomination. Mr.Trump, they maintain, is not electable and Clinton will beat him in November.

While a losing race is always a possibility, the numbers and history here suggest otherwise.

The professional punditry consistently fails to acknowledge the evidence that is real.

At this point in 2012, for example, Mitt Romney, who went on to win the GOP nomination for president that year, had garnered 9.9 million primary votes. Mr. Trump now sits on 10.1 million votes. And by the time the Indiana, New Jersey and California votes are counted, Trump will have easily surpassed George W. Bush’s 2000 primary vote total of 10.8 million.

As for losing to Clinton, Ronald Reagan consistently trailed Jimmy Carter in 1980 only to go on and win in a landslide. He did that by attracting blue collar Democrats, independents, and bringing disaffected Republicans back into the fold, the exact coalition that has brought Mr. Trump his success.

Real evidence, this.

That Mr.Trump’s articulation of “Americans and America First” policies requires the traditional and neo conservative political thinker to stretch beyond their established definitive parameters is elucidated by their own great consternation at his success.

But Mr. Will takes it a step further. In an attempt to justify why the GOP should reject their own nominee, he redefines the purpose of the modern political party convention.

It should not, he writes, “passively affirm the will of a mere plurality of the voters” but rather “choose a plausible nominee who has a reasonable chance to win.”

Say what?

If that’s the case, then Americans are wasting an awful lot of time participating in the nomination process. Not to mention the time and money wasted by the candidates themselves.

Mr. Will is wrong.

The purpose of the party convention is to nominate the candidate that best reflects the collective body’s vision, its aspirations, hopes and frustrations, known as a “platform”. And this is done through the primary process where “plausibility” is determined.

The candidate that best represents that collective will, gets the most votes during the primaries and, therefore, well, you get it.

That the Trump campaign does this unconventionally is no reason for the professional conservative punditry to fear his leadership.

After all, the professional class built the Titanic, an amateur built the ark.

Gary Wisenbaker (gary@blackstonestrategy.com) is a corporate communications and political consultant.