In deciding how to describe the ongoing fratricide within the Republican Party, several metaphors and phrases sprang to mind. Rock, hard place. Rats, sinking ship. Petard-hoisting. There are several which are apt and appropriate, but I finally settled on the wise words of Pogo Possum. Because the Republican Party truly has fulfilled Pogo's reflective prediction: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

That is a rather amusing (and grandiose) way of beginning what is going to be, essentially, a "clip column." Because now that Donald Trump has finally gotten caught saying something which is so outrageous that it is actually impacting him in the polls, I thought it was high time to take a look back and see how we got here.

It was pretty easy to see, a very long time ago, what was going to happen to the presidential race if Donald Trump threw his hairpiece in the ring. His personality was so outsized that predicting his impact was fairly easy to do. In February, 2015, I made a prediction about how Trump would affect the presidential race, a prediction that has stood the test of time all the way up to the present, for the most part:

No word yet from the rest of the Republican field, but it's not hard to imagine them privately horrified at the prospect of facing Trump out on the campaign trail. Trump, if nothing else, is his own man. He says exactly what he feels or believes, with absolutely no filter whatsoever. This won't get him elected president, but it could create an absolute minefield for the rest of the Republicans, as reporters gleefully ask them about the most recent quip from Trump. Journalists will practice in front of mirrors (so they don't break down into peals of laughter) asking questions such as: "So what do you think about Trump's idea of just going ahead and forcibly annexing Cuba?"

That last line was written in jest, as I tried to come up with something Trump might promise on the campaign trail. He has -- so far -- not suggested forcibly annexing Cuba. However, he has indeed suggested just stealing Middle East oil by the strength of our armed forces, so I have to say my outrageous suggestion wasn't too far off the mark.

But the core prediction stands up: the entire presidential race has been reacting to Trumpisms. The primary was entirely about all the other Republicans reacting to each outrageous Trump statement, and the general election has certainly seen a goodly amount of the same (notably, from within his own party, as they struggle with the conundrum of supporting Trump or bailing on him).

Right after Trump announced his run, I was a little more specific in my prediction:

Trump's candidacy is going to cause the Republican Party several problems, though. The first is that Trump will always be able to (pun definitely intended) trump every other Republican candidate in the "speaking off-the-cuff, and saying monumentally ridiculous things" category. Oh, sure, people like Newt Gingrich set the bar pretty high (or low, really) in years past, and it's undeniable that we've already got several people in the Republican race who seem to have mastered the art of "saying idiotic things" (Ben Carson immediately springs to mind), but Donald Trump is in a league of his own, really. This is going to set up a conundrum for the more serious Republican candidates: should they just ignore Trump's blathering, or should they respond when he truly goes over the edge? We'll see a partial answer to that question soon, as in his ad-libbed announcement today he has already called Mexican immigrants "rapists" and other nasty names. Will Jeb or Marco respond? We'll have to see, but this problem wouldn't even exist if Trump weren't in the running.

Republicans have had it tough, for the entire election. They initially saw Trump as an outsider who would say things far outside the standard GOP orthodoxy. "He's not a real Republican," they'd tell themselves (in an effort to make themselves feel better). But then he started getting a whole lot of very real support from Republican primary voters. This is where the "he is us" realization began to dawn, at least seen from the outside looking in. In early July of last year, I was pointing it out:

To put this slightly differently, Republicans are going to have to confront the worst parts of their own base's nature. Which is a tricky thing to do, because it can erode any given candidate's support among the very voters which will determine the outcome of the primary season. Yes, there are racists and xenophobes among the Republican base, just as there are likely racists and xenophobes among the Democratic base. The difference between the two parties, however, is that Democrats largely gave up pandering to these attitudes roughly a half-century ago (an argument could even be made they began to do so in 1948, when Strom Thurmond bolted the party to form the "Dixiecrats"). The Republican Party, as a whole, has not shied away from such pandering in recent decades. Most Republicans these days prefer to use code words (or "dog whistles") to show their support for these attitudes, but some simply aren't that polished. Some Republicans truly believe that if they get enough white votes they can still win a national election (they're wrong about this, incidentally -- Mitt Romney got a higher percentage of the white vote than Ronald Reagan, and still lost).

. . .

Trump's schtick is to tell what he sees as the truth, politics be damned. But he's not the only Republican running on this playbook. Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson are all running similarly-themed campaigns (as well as a few others, to lesser degrees). Cruz has already thrown his lot in with Trump's immigration position, so it's to be expected that anything Trump says in a debate will garner at least some support from a few other candidates. This is the very definition of the problem, in fact. Trump isn't saying things that are so far beyond the bounds of Republican positions, after all, he's just saying them in rather colorful ways. If he truly were staking out what might be called pariah positions, then the entire Republican field would unite in denouncing them. They're not, to put it mildly. It took weeks for any Republican candidate to condemn Trump's immigration remarks, after all. It took Jeb Bush something like 18 days to disagree with Trump. Obviously, the Republican field would really prefer to ignore Trump as a distraction to their own campaign messaging. But that becomes impossible when he's saying such things right next to you on a national debate stage.

By the end of that month, I was contemplating Trump as the GOP nominee (this was a lot earlier than most of the inside-the-Beltway types managed, I might add).

Republicans running for office this year have been at a loss as to how to treat Trump. They are in a classic "damned if I do, damned if I don't" conundrum -- avid Trump supporters make up a big portion of the Republican base, but then so do Republicans who are disgusted with Trump's antics. Backing Trump or repudiating Trump will both lead directly to enraging one of those groups. Some, like Paul Ryan, have tried to create a tightrope to walk between these two choices, but not with any notable success.

The problem, obviously, has gotten a lot more acute since last Friday. It's even trickier now, because Republicans who have turned against Trump (and this list is a long one and getting longer by the day) now have to explain to the voters why all the rest of Trump's outrageousness was OK before Friday. Most don't want to explain this, but their Democratic opponents are forcing the issue in a big way.

Last August I wrote an article offering up four tactics that I thought the other Republican presidential candidates might use in a debate. One of these was supporting Trump. Now, obviously the dynamics of a competitor for the GOP nomination are somewhat different than GOP candidates for other offices deciding whether to support their own party's nominee, but the prediction about timing certainly still holds true:

There are two big risks to kissing up to Trump, of course. The first is that you are obviously following, not leading. This isn't very presidential. The second danger is that you follow Trump right over a cliff. If Trump does blow it at some point, it's likely going to be a pretty spectacular event (he is, after all, Donald Trump). If you have been supporting and defending Trump the whole campaign, you may get caught in the wreckage if he goes down. The trick would be to support him right up to the edge of the cliff, and then shake your head sadly and watch Trump go over the edge, by himself. But this would require precision timing, which may be impossible.

The precise moment I spoke of happened last Friday. As the Trump train headed over the edge of the cliff, many Republicans jumped off in desperation. Did they jump off early enough to save themselves, or did they jump off after the train was already in mid-air? That has yet to be determined.

Most people in the Republican Party -- apart from a few brave folks like Mitt Romney -- at some point decided that supporting Trump was better than not supporting him. As has been true all along, Trump's extreme positions did not disqualify him with millions of voters in the GOP base. They were, after all, not all that far removed from the official party line. Trump eschewed the traditional GOP "dog whistle" phrases, and was far more blunt than professional Republican politicians, but what he was saying was pretty close to what the party as a whole had believed for a long time. Look into the history of conservatives' use of the term "amnesty" if you require proof.

Trump's vulgarity may be his downfall. But even if Trump hadn't run, the candidate who came second (in delegates) was Ted Cruz -- another Republican who has staked out some pretty extreme positions. What this all means is that cries of "Donald Trump is not who we are as a party!" coming from Republicans now are nothing more than wishful thinking. If it were true, after all, then there wouldn't be any conundrum for a Republican to face when deciding not to support Trump. If Trump didn't resonate with a large segment of the Republican base, then it would be painless for another Republican to refuse to support Trump. Which is not the case, obviously.

Pogo was right. Republicans are finding out just how prophetic his quip has proven to be. The GOP has met the enemy, and he is indeed them. That's what makes dumping Trump such a headache, after all.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant