As Donald Trump continues to embroil himself in noxious controversies, many pundits are asking why we’re not seeing more prominent Republicans disavow Donald Trump. One reason matters more than people think: that they can’t dump Trump without alienating a significant number of the people who elected them.

Ted Cruz knew that his decision to not endorse Donald Trump on the Republican Convention stage would be controversial. But even Cruz did not anticipate the pure and overwhelming hostility his speech would receive from the convention crowd. “Cruz told donors that he didn’t anticipate the intensity of the audience’s response,” according to reporting by Eliana Johnson of National Review.

It’s a lesson that hasn’t been lost on other Republican politicians. Most Republicans simply aren’t as offended as #NeverTrumpers are by Trump’s behavior and rhetoric. Indeed, in many ways, Trump more accurately represents Republicans’ concerns and grievances than do conventional Republican politicians...

The myth of ‘moderate’ GOP presidential nominees
...Mitt Romney wasn’t the nationalists’ first choice, but his aggressive rhetoric about “self-deportation” brought the nationalists to his side in his fight against Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who had signed a bill granting in-state college tuition to illegal immigrants in Texas.

Dole and McCain proved, long before Donald Trump, that GOP voters are much less ideologically conservative than intellectual conservatives would prefer. They won the GOP nod not because they were moderates, but because they appealed to the nationalist tendencies of white GOP voters...

The GOP’s white identity death spiral
...The GOP has been in a white identity death spiral since 1964. Every year, the GOP’s overwhelmingly white majority tends to the grievances of the subpopulation of white voters who are angry, while ignoring the concerns of non-white voters, a tendency that drives away the few non-white Republicans try to who stick around. Over time, the only Republicans left are people who have no idea what non-white voters care about, because they spend so little time interacting with people who don’t look like them...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/aviksaroy/2016/08/04/the-gops-white-identity-politics-problem-goes-way-beyond-donald-trump/#7cc554df29ac