We have finally arrived at the end of the 2016 GOP nominating process. Every U.S. state and territory has held a primary or caucus. Every vote has been counted. Every Republican in the country has had an opportunity to make his or her voice heard. And approximately 40% of GOP voters have made themselves heard loud and clear, casting their votes for Donald Trump, a businessman with no prior political experience. As a result, Trump is now the presumptive nominee.

Many conservatives are deeply disturbed by the fact that the Republican Party has been taken over by Trump, a man whose record is loaded with liberal policy positions and inconsistencies. Trump is the assumed nominee because he has collected a majority of the delegates to next week’s GOP convention in Cleveland. However, conservative leaders like Erick Erickson, Bill Kristol (who has been called all sorts of anti-Semitic slurs by Trump supporters), and David French (whose adopted black daughter has been cyber-bullied with racial slurs by Trump supporters because of her father’s anti-Trump stance) are attempting to produce a different nominee in Cleveland. Kristol in particular has been making the dubious claim that most delegates to the convention want to nominate someone other than Trump. That claim is probably wishful thinking. But does it even matter? Could Trump really get dumped at the convention?

Various methods of dumping Trump and selecting someone else as the party’s standard-bearer have been proposed. Curly Haugland, a veteran Republican National Committee member, has posited for decades that all delegates to the convention are inherently unbound and that there is no such thing as a pledged delegate who is required to vote for a certain candidate. According to this view, anti-Trump delegates may vote to nominate whomever they want, regardless of which candidates the voters in their states chose. Despite the increased attention Haugland’s controversial view is receiving this year, though, it remains a fringe opinion and therefore is not a viable option to overthrow Trump.

The only real chance to nominate someone other than Trump runs through the convention’s rules committee. This 112-member panel sets the rules for the nominating process, and only its members truly have the power to unbind delegates. If one quarter (28) of the rules committee members vote to propose unbinding all the convention’s delegates on the first ballot, the resolution will then be presented on the convention floor, where delegates will then have the ability to free themselves from their states’ results with a simple majority vote. This scenario is the most realistic way to strip Trump of the nomination, but it remains highly unlikely. According to Politico, it seems unlikely that 28 members of the rules committee would vote to unbind the delegates, and virtually impossible that such a proposal would pass on the convention floor. However, “Never Trump” activists remain bullish about the prospects of stopping Trump in this manner.

But they shouldn’t do it. The convention in Cleveland should nominate Trump. Some readers might be confused, as my disgust for Trump is well-documented. It remains true that Trump is a rich New York liberal, just like Hillary. It remains true that Trump’s foreign policy is downright dangerous. It remains true that Trump’s hateful, divisive rhetoric has offended many Americans. And it remains true that I will never vote for Trump. However, he should still be nominated in Cleveland.

Firstly, nominating anyone other than Trump is likely to cost the GOP the election anyway. Millions of angry Trump voters will stay home or vote for Hillary in such a scenario, and they will still be Trump supporters come 2020- whether he decides to run again or some other maniac takes his place. On the flip side, if Trump runs and loses to Hillary (which he almost certainly will, as per both polling and demographic data), hopefully his movement will die out and we can return to nominating a sane, competent candidate in 2020. That’s the simplest and best way for this to end. It’s worth taking the risk of putting Trump on the ballot in November, because it remains virtually impossible for him to overcome the daunting math working in his opponent’s favor. Any other Republican in his shoes would be headed towards a historic victory in November. But Trump is staring at an epic loss in the general election. And due to his historically high baked-in negatives, he has virtually no chance of reversing the situation. That’s why I’m not concerned that a Trump nomination would yield a Trump presidency.

But the main reason that Trump should emerge from the convention as the nominee is because he actually won the race. He received more votes than anyone else, won more states than anyone else, and earned a majority of the delegates to the convention. Republican primary voters have chosen their general election candidate according to the nominating rules, and nobody has the right to steal the nomination from the candidate they chose. Upending the primary results would render the entire nominating process worthless, disregarding the will of the people. It would also mean that the GOP is no better than the Democrats, who use super delegates to rig their nominating system.

Is Trump a scam artist who has systematically lied his way through the primary, feeding voters flat-out mistruths about his business record as well as his past and present policy positions? Yes. Has Trump donated money to help put people like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in power? Most certainly. Has Trump supported socialized health care, an assault weapons ban, and numerous other far-left ideas? Yep. Is Trump a conservative? Not in the slightest. Trump may be literally the worst and least competent major party nominee in history. However, he played by the rules and won fair and square. He garnered more votes than any of his rivals and amassed more than 1,237 delegates. Republican voters have spoken, and they have selected Trump. Now it’s time for GOP voters to live with the consequences of that decision, namely that Trump will almost certainly lose in November. He is an awful candidate who doesn’t represent many members of his own party. But that doesn’t mean Trump should have the nomination stripped away from him. He won fair and square, and the rules can’t suddenly be changed in middle of the game. Allowing delegates to “vote their conscience” is the equivalent of saying that Republican voters are too dumb to choose their own nominee. That would be the precise kind of elitist approach that Trump’s supporters rightfully despise.

The bottom line is that Hillary will almost definitely be our next president. Trump is the only candidate in recent history with a disapproval rating higher than Hillary’s. That isn’t an opinion. It’s a fact. It is virtually impossible for him to win. She would be incapable of winning too, except for the fact that she’s running against Trump. But nominating someone else at this point isn’t worth it. It would disenfranchise millions of Republican-leaning voters and would only serve to give renewed life to the Trumpian “anti-establishment” movement. The best possible outcome is for Trump to be nominated and then crash and burn in November, which will hopefully preclude him or anyone like him from gaining traction in future primaries. Regardless, GOP delegates should not throw the people’s preference in the trash. Republican primary voters have made their bed, and now it’s time for them to sleep in it.

(TLS welcomes your letters and opinions by sending them to newstips@thelakewoodscoop.com)