With the background threat of a New Conservative Party, which will ensure GOP losses for years if the new third party gathers more momentum than did the Tea Party, and other examples of bashing the GOP, particularly by the anti-establishment right, Noah Rothman has penned an important piece over at Commentary magazine.

First, he says the turbo-conservatives (my word, not his, though we describe the same reality) nominated Trump because they (wrongly) believed that the GOP doesn't know how to win.  Mr. Rothman writes:

Trump has made no secret of his antipathy toward conservatism and the politicians who speak in its name. The Republican nominee is now in open warfare with one of the GOP’s most popular figures, House Speaker Paul Ryan, calling him “a man who doesn’t know how to win.” Trump supporters will nod their heads to this assertion. That view is dogma on the anti-establishmentarian right. This pique led to the nomination of an unqualified presidential nominee who will badly lose a winnable race for the White House. Now, out of spite, those same people who sacrificed the presidency are contemplating the sacrifice of the GOP’s majorities. Because they’ve convinced themselves that Republicans like Ryan don’t “know how to win,” they believe they’re not forfeiting much. They’re dead wrong.

Then the rest of Mr. Rothman's essay is about all the victories the GOP leadership, both in the states and in Washington, D.C.

Two sample paragraphs from the victories in Washington follow.

First, the GOP has stopped the Obama agenda in many ways.

Republicans in Congress have effectively blocked Barack Obama’s agenda since 2011. They have obstructed punitive taxes on businesses that seek reduced labor and materials costs overseas. They stopped Obama’s DREAM Act, which offered citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. House Republicans sued the Obama administration over its extraconstitutional “executive actions” deferring deportation status to millions of illegal immigrants -- and won. They’ve thwarted a slew of new gun control measures. They prevented passage of a series of new stimulus bills Barack Obama labeled “jobs” proposals even after conceding “shovel ready” was a fantasy. They’ve prevented more green kickback schemes, like Solyndra and Sapphire Energy. By 2009, federal spending had expanded by around 6 percent every year for nearly 30 years. That ended in 2011. Since the tea party GOP retook the House, federal spending has grown by only 1.3 percent annually.

Second, Mr. Rothman lays out the accomplishments of the GOP:

And what has the GOP passed? A lot. By July of 2016, the Republican-led Senate set a record for passing more legislation through that chamber that became law than at any point since 1990. After retaking both chambers, the congressional GOP passed an Obamacare repeal bill and forced Barack Obama to veto it. The president now concedes that his signature reform law is deeply flawed and needs a major overhaul -- a concession that Republicans fought for six years to win. The GOP-led Congress started passing budgets again in 2015, rather than simply relying on continuing resolutions to fund the government. The GOP passed a bill to keep Guantanamo Bay open, despite Obama’s veto threat. The president blinked. They’ve passed anti-Net Neutrality legislation, expanded funding for the military, the de-funding of Planned Parenthood, and new measures to vet refugees fleeing war in the Middle East, none of which Obama allowed pass into law.

Then Mr. Rothman concludes with common sense about the turbo-conservatives (again, my term, not his):

Conservatives were led astray in 2016. They fell prey to a narrative of victimhood — a persecution complex that made Donald Trump possible. Trump will lose, but, despite his best efforts, he may not succeed in taking the GOP’s congressional majorities with him. With luck, those self-described conservative voices peddling a malicious myth of Republican complicity with Obama will be exposed and discredited. There is still time to save the Republican Party from the decimation they have joined with Democrats in wishing upon it.

It is a sad fact that turbo-conservatives, particularly the ones who dominate talk TV and radio, have been spending far too long bashing the "establishment," even calling those who disagree with their strategy "silly" or "smarmy".

If we lose the White House, and it's looking more and more likely, the turbo-conservatives will blame the "establishment," not themselves, even though it is so obvious that the specific GOP leaders, like Ryan, McConnell, and former speaker Boehner – three specific humans, not some "establishment" cabal – read the political landscape accurately and have done a lot to advance conservatism, while the turbos have accomplished little except push for the Ultimate Outsider, the weakest candidate of them all.  A little self-knowledge would go a long way.

James Arlandson's website is Live as Free People (new look), where he has posted Bill Clinton nudged Trump to run in the GOP, the GOP has not given 'everything' Obama wanted, the GOP 'Establishment' will have to save Trump and country, and In defense of the GOP "Establishment."