George Will, Brent Scowcroft, Hank Paulson, and Paul Ryan all fear Donald Trump.

They’re part of a growing list of GOP Establishment Illuminati that includes Bill Kristol, Robert Kagan and Mitch McConnell.

George Will officially declared himself an independent – no longer aligned with the GOP.  He recommends that Republican conservative voters “grit their teeth” and hope Trump loses.  Referring to the GOP, Will said, “This is not my party.” 

George doesn’t understand that he never owned the party.

On June 23, 2016, CNN trumpeted that “a heavyweight foreign policy adviser to Republican presidents” had endorsed Hillary Clinton’s candidacy: 

“Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to Presidents George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford, and who worked in the White House of Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, said Clinton ‘brings truly unique experience and perspective to the White House.’”

Then, on June 24, 2016, CNN gleefully announced that Hank Paulson “endorsed Hillary Clinton, adding his name to prominent GOP heavyweights who are backing the presumptive Democratic nominee.” 

Yet another “prominent” GOP “heavyweight” for Clinton!

Paulson was Treasury Secretary during George W. Bush’s presidency.  Hank brought us the 2008 Big Bank Bailout – along with union pension fund bailouts – plus, funding for all those “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects that were never-ready for shovels.  A huge scam.

And there’s Robert Kagan, a reputed neoconservative who writes for the Washington Post. On July 21, 2016, Kagan is scheduled to headline a D.C. fundraiser for Clinton. TPM quotes him saying,

“For this former Republican, and perhaps for others, the only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton. The party cannot be saved, but the country still can be." 

Kagan is concerned that America will become 1933 Germany.  His May 18, 2016, Post article led with this incendiary title: “This is how fascism comes to America.” In it, he deploys 1,300 words to describe Trump as America’s rendition of Adolf Hitler.  

No hedging from Kagan there – we Americans are potential Nazis. Speak for yourself, Bob.

Kagan’s byline at the Post reads, “Robert Kagan is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing columnist for The Post.”  

The “Brookings” in Brookings Institution was Robert S. Brookings, once President Emeritus of Washington University (a signed, discarded book from WU Library is the source for the quote below).

In The Way Forward (1932), Brookings wrote,

“The economic consequences of what went on before the crash and of what has followed it, have been of such a drastic nature as to leave us, and indeed the whole world, after the lapse of more than two year’ time, in a state of industrial and agricultural depression requiring a thoroughly planned policy if we are to attain a sound healthy economic condition.”  

Brookings firmly believed in central economic planning. 

Brookings also wrote,

“This means that our present system for the distribution of wealth is unjust to those who mainly produce it and whose needs would easily absorb all of its products, could there be brought about some modification in our system of compensation providing a more equitable distribution and so increasing the consumption power of workers. This – distribution based on social justice – is the main problem of the world today.”

Sound familiar? 

Kagan is a poster boy for a GOPe that talks the limited-government-talk, but walks the bigger- government-walk.  

Then there’s The Weekly Standard founder and editor, Bill Kristol.  Kristol, another neocon, came out early and loud against Trump.  In response to Will’s party abandonment, Kristol tweeted this:

Kristol declared he won’t vote for Trump.  He has encouraged Mitt Romney and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse to step forward as alternative candidates.  And, he asked Sen. Lindsey Graham to “resurrect the campaign he suspended in December.”

How do you resurrect a campaign that was never alive?

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell display the anti-Trump style of politico-speak characterized by the English idiom, damn with faint praise. 

Ryan called Trump “a very unique nominee.”  He might have added, “Bless his heart,” if he lived south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

McConnell’s comments about Trump, made to the Washington Post, went public on June 10, 2016, in an article with the blatantly editorialized title, “Mitch McConnell just made a devastating admission about Trump — and the GOP.” 

“Mitch McConnell is getting a lot of attention this morning for his startlingly candid admission, in a new Bloomberg Politics podcast, that Donald Trump ‘doesn’t know a lot about the issues’ and has not displayed the requisite ‘seriousness of purpose’ for the presidency. And it certainly is clarifying to have the top Senate Republican admit this about the party’s standard bearer.”

The Washington Post always welcomes devastatingly clarifying negative comments from Republicans, about other Republicans.

The list of prominent GOPe anti-Trumpters is likely to grow as the Republican Convention approaches.  So why are some GOPe Illuminati so afraid of Trump?  Here’s why:

Trump threatens the complacent comfort they’ve long enjoyed as members of the junior political party – junior even though they now control both Houses of Congress.  

Unlike the Democrats, who hunger for full power and control over the federal government, the GOPe aims to “go-along-to-get-along.”  They don’t want to lead. It’s too hard. They’d rather follow. It’s less risky.

Besides, the party is ill-equipped to lead.  It has no guiding, discernible political philosophy. It collectively swims in the neither hot, nor cold, waters of moderation.  

When conservative GOP Senators are elected, the moderates ostracize them as extremists, a la Cruz.  

When liberal GOP Senators are elected, the moderates see them as bridges across the proverbial aisle that allegedly separates the two parties.  In fact, no bridge is needed.  Just a stepping stone, or two, will suffice.

Because Trump threatens to destabilize the GOP’s status quo position as the junior political party, he presents an existential threat to the livelihoods of party apparatchiks. The GOPe is fully content to play the Washington Generals to the Democrat Globe Trotters. 

Meanwhile, everybody gets paid. Not just the elected pols.

Faux dialectical partisanship in America is big business for a burgeoning host of enterprises.  In addition to the pols who benefit from this dualistic charade, there’s a long list of roadies who keep the show on the road, including, but not limited to: the professional fund-raisers; the career strategists and consultants; the crony-capitalism lobbyists; the political action groups’ administrators and accountants; the media pundits (including most of the FOX All Stars), who often play the roles of dueling talking-heads; the erudite fellows who swim in Think Tanks (like Kagan at the Brookings Institute); the multiple, redundant polling enterprises; the political-ad firms; big media that charges big fees to air political ads; the major-events planners and providers; caterers and sound technicians for those big events; the new myriad of social media hacks…the list goes on.

Let’s not forget the little people who make the bumper stickers, the hats, the signs, the flags, the banners, the campaign buttons, and the requisite convention balloons.

It’s like when the credits roll at the end of the latest blockbuster movies showing how many and varied are the workers who make a living in Hollywood – even when the film is a bust.

It’s no surprise that four of the ten richest neighborhoods in the U.S. surround Washington D.C.  The town is a bipartisan, bottomless sinkhole for taxpayer and donor greenbacks.

Then along comes a Donald Trump – an outsider, despite disingenuous efforts to stamp him as an “insider” – who threatens to lead the GOP from the here comfortable known, to the unknown somewhere else.  

It’s no wonder that the Wills, Ryans, Kristols et al are threatened by Trump. He represents a clear and present danger to their comfortable lives.

And, since they know what’s best for the nation, much better than the rubes that determined the GOP primary results, the Illuminati despair at the thought that Trump will represent their beloved party in the General Election.  

They don’t get it.  It’s not their party.  Maybe it was once.  But no longer.