Why it could cost Trump the nomination.

Let’s hope. As Matt Lewis notes, he’s been behaving even more stupidly than usual as of late.

[Update early evening]

How to dump Trump:

No longer is Donald Trump a trifle, a fillip, an entertainment, the personification of the liberal caricature of Republicans, easy to mock, easier to dismiss, a phenomenon at which to awe, an avenger of the people who has the right enemies. He’s a threat to American democracy. And he must be stopped.

I don’t say this lightly. I’m as critical of our elites as the next talk radio host. Their uncritical attitude toward globalization would embarrass Dr. Pangloss. Immigration, trade, and internationalism have costs. But these costs must be weighed against the benefits, and then ameliorated prudently, gradually, and steadfastly. Trump would have us believe our troubles will vanish as soon as we build his wall, raise tariffs, and exit NATO. It’s a fantasy.

And it is precisely this embrace of wishful thinking that makes him so dangerous. Politicians lie. But there is a difference between the lying common in democracies—a Clinton family specialty—and the construction of alternate realities more common to autocratic regimes. Trump, his rallies, and his Twitter mobs fall under the second category. Trump is expert at asking, “Who are you going to believe: Me or your lying eyes?” He not only gets marks to fall for the con. He convinces them to embellish and to extend it, to harass skeptics and critics, to spew bile and hatred. He’s convinced a large swath of Republican voters to see vulgarity as strength, braggadocio as character, brashness as capability. He inverts standards of judgment and of truth, and if he is allowed to reshape the GOP in his image there is no telling where he’d turn next.

The case of his campaign manager is instructive. Just look at the police video. You’ll see why Corey Lewandowski was charged with simple battery. But Trump and his minions weave an intricate web of lies to deny, excuse, defend, and celebrate their man. That young woman who asked a question? To them, she’s not a reporter. She’s a security threat, publicity hound, hoaxer who enjoys the attention. That their messages contradict doesn’t matter. The lies serve the overarching goal of appearing strong, decisive, unflinching, and untamed. If this is how Candidate Trump responds to a conservative journalist for a friendly publication, how would President Trump behave toward his opponents?

I don’t want to know the answer. Nor should you. Hence the task of liberal democracy: Stop Trump. How? The quickest way would be to deny him the 1,237 delegates required to win the GOP nomination on the first ballot. John McCormack of the Weekly Standard has done the math: Beat Trump in Wisconsin, in Indiana, and in Nebraska, split the delegates in Oregon and Washington, defeat him in South Dakota, Montana, and California, and he’ll fall short.

It’s an uphill battle. But not entirely utopian: Trump has lost some momentum as his campaign turns into a circus that embarrasses most Republicans. And the cause is noble. If Trump doesn’t win on the first ballot, then the convention will be thrown to the delegates. And the complexity of the proceedings will favor the well organized, the best resourced, and the most influential members of the party. The Trump campaign is none of these things.

Yes. Also, I would note that if there is anything that Trump doesn’t understand about how the GOP delegate apportioning works, it is how the process of running for president independently works. It’s a fantasy for both him and his supporters.

I wonder if all of the insane abuse she’s taken for the past seven years has driven her around the bend?

He looks like he could get shut out in Wisconsin on Tuesday, and it’s getting harder to see a road to a majority of delegates for him. Meanwhile, Jonah asks if some are approaching their Colonel Nicholson moment:

For months, GOP pooh-bahs, cable personalities (including some friends and colleagues of mine at Fox News), talk-radio hosts, and politicians stood by and watched — or cheered — as Trump built his populist cult of personality almost unopposed. Now that Trump has a personal relationship, as it were, with his followers, he can do no wrong.

Trump famously joked that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his support. That remains to be seen, but he can play rhetorical footsie with the KKK, reveal that he thinks judges “sign bills,” subscribe to vile “truther” explanations of 9/11 and the Iraq War, embrace the health-care mandate, traffic in reprehensible sectarian tribalism, and vow to weaken the First Amendment so he can exact vengeance on journalists who don’t kowtow to his Brobdingnagian ego — yet not shake loose his fans.

That “success” has bred more success, as politicians jump on board the train. New Jersey governor Chris Christie set a torch to his integrity by endorsing a man who stands against nearly everything Christie once claimed to believe. Christie has confirmed all the darker aspects of his reputation as a cynical, self-interested, spiteful bully.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432160/donald-trump-supporters-reckoningMany decent and sincere Republicans, in and out of the Republican leadership, have been operating on the assumption that Trump will fade and that the gravest threat is a third-party run by the dean of Trump University. There was a time when that concern was defensible. But once it became clear that he was favored to win the nomination outright, Republicans should have realized that a third-party run was more like a best-case scenario.

Better the GOP do battle with a know-nothing bigot (and lose the presidency) than become the party of know-nothing bigots (and still lose the presidency).

That’s why I embrace the Twitter hashtag #NeverTrump, initiated by conservative talk-show host Erick Erickson. For too long, Trump has benefited from the assumption that the non-Trump faction of the party will be “reasonable” and support the nominee. Such thinking paves the road to power for demagogues.

Yes.

[Update a while later]

What is wrong with Ted Cruz?

I don’t see it, either. To me, the only issue is whether he can win, but as I’ve been saying for many months, people underestimate him at their peril.

[Update later morning]

Thinking and writing about Trump:

If in fact Trump doesn’t win, that’s okay with him too. I know that many people would disagree with that statement of mine, because Trump loves to win and hates to lose. I agree with them on that—he loves to win and hates to lose—but I think in this case it depends how you define “win” and “lose.” If Trump loses the nomination he can tell himself that he has won because so many of his supporters will cleave to him and it will probably mean that the eventual GOP nominee will lose. So, if he can’t get the nomination, he will have wrecked the hopes and prospects of those (the GOP) who have kept him from it, and revenge is very much a kind of victory, too. If on the other hand Trump gets the nomination and loses the election, something similar would be operating: Trump will have gotten revenge on the GOP, and he will have built an extremely loyal following and demonstrated his enormous power over the media and his followers. Of course, none of this takes into account the very real possibility that Trump is actually okay with a Clinton victory or even has had it as his intent the whole time (I don’t think the latter, because I think his ego wouldn’t allow it, but I do concede that it’s certainly possible).

If he was actively trying to destroy the Republican Party, and small-government conservatism, what would he be doing differently?

Ann Coulter’s crush the last time around was Chris Christie, and this cycle she’s been fawning over the Donald. But it looks like even she can’t defend him any more. I wonder how many other eyes will clear of scales? As Geraghty writes:

Donald Trump didn’t suddenly change in the past few days, weeks or months. He’s the same guy he always was, the same guy that most of us in the conservative movement and GOP have been staunchly opposing for the past year. He didn’t abruptly become reckless, obnoxious, ill-informed, erratic, hot-tempered, pathologically dishonest, narcissistic, crude and catastrophically unqualified for the presidency overnight. He’s always been that guy, and you denied it and ignored it and hand-waved it away and made excuses every step of the way because you were convinced that you were so much smarter than the rest of us. You were so certain that you had received some superior wavelength giving you special insight into the Donald; only you could tell that it was all an act. Only you could grasp that his constant courting of controversy was just to get attention from the media. Only you could instinctively sense that his style would play brilliantly in the general election and win over working-class Democrats. (SPOILER ALERT: It isn’t.) You insisted that you could “coach him.”

You came to those conclusions not because you’re smarter than the rest of us, but because you’re actually more foolish than the rest of us. You insisted Occam’s Razor couldn’t possibly be true– that Trump acts the way he does because this is who he is, this is the way he is all the time, and he will always be like this. You fooled yourself into believing that Trump was playing this nine-level chess that only you and a few others could perceive and understand. Only you could see the long game.

As he says, there is no long game. I really do think that he’s trying to figure out how to get out of this. Trump is like the dog who chases cars, but now he’s realizing he won’t know what to do if he catches one.

Jim is angry. So am I.

[Update a few minutes later]

Trump castigates Scott Walker for not raising taxes, and thinks that “health care and education” are among the top three government functions.

But yeah, let’s elect this “conservative.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

The culture that created Donald Trump was “liberal,” not conservative. (Scare quotes because it’s not really liberal, it’s leftist.)

[Update a while later]

A top Trump strategist quits and warns America about him.

I didn’t need the warning.

[Thursday-afternoon update]

Whenever Trump says something particularly stupid, it's cuz it's what he stupidly imagines a conservative believes. https://t.co/aK7P2z0wiW

— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) March 31, 2016

[Bumped]

The latest polling of likely voters shows a dead heat between Cruz and Trump.

It’s worth noting (as the article doesn’t) that CA is winner-take-all by Congressional District. So if that polling holds, Cruz would probably pick up about half the delegates. But we don’t know what the race will look like by the time CA has come around. Trump may have already taken enough delegates, or there may be a last-minute push on to prevent him.