…[T]he biggest flaw lies with the thought experiment itself, rather than with any particular way you run it through your mind. Even if Trump had never entered the race, the nominee would still have had to prevail in the Republican primary, a process that entails appealing to the same ethno-nationalist base that Trump fully embraced. There’s a reason Rubio and Kasich fared far worse than Ted Cruz, who almost never led Clinton in head-to-heads, and who in turn fared worse than Trump. The whole construct is built upon what the writer Richard Yeselson has described as “the ahistorical anti-structural view of Trump as just a GOP screwup,” a curse that struck the party rather than a product of its political culture. There is no Republican politician who deserves the assumption he’d be beating Clinton handily right now, because no politician who survived the primary could avoid severe damage himself.
From: The GOP’s New Delusion: Hillary Would Be Losing Badly to Any Other Republican | New Republic
). Go to our 
My brother in-law once was telling me about my nephew’s recent soccer win. My sister-in-law interrupted him and said, “But George, Michael’s team lost.” George said, “Well, we woulda won if the ref hadn’t made that stupid call.”
I said, “George, woulda, coulda, shoulda.”
George, indignant, said, “No, not at all!”
Or, as I’ve observed before, if things were different, they would be different.
In any event, the R primary process demonstrated the last man standing method of winning vs the dominant person/team method, kinda like the GS Warr… I mean they woulda…