Jonah explains how he could beat Hillary.

“Watching [MSNBC’s] Chris Matthews interview Obama,” Ace wrote, “I was struck by just how uninterested in policy questions Matthews (and his panel) were, and how almost every question seemed to be, at heart, about Obama’s emotional response to difficulties — not about policy itself, but about Obama’s Hero’s Journey in navigating the plot of President Barack Obama: The Movie.”

I think something similar has been at the root of Trump’s success. I can’t bring myself to call him a hero, but many people see him that way. Even his critics concede that he’s entertaining. I see him as being a bit like Rodney Dangerfield, constantly complaining he doesn’t get enough respect.

Regardless, Trump bulldozed his way through the primaries in part because the nomination was his MacGuffin and people wanted to see the movie play out. Many voters, and nearly the entire press corps, got caught up in the story of Trump — much the same way the press became obsessed with the “mythic” story of Obama in 2008. People just wanted to see what happened next.

What I’d like to see happen next is the appearance of a candidate who favors limited government.

[Update a few minutes later]

The case for, and against Gary Johnson, at NRO.

Related: Thoughts from Nick Gillespie.

If there was ever a year for a libertarian breakthrough, this would be it.

[Update a while later]

Wow. Mary Matalin switches political parties:

Pressed Thursday about why she switched political parties, Matalin told Bloomberg Politics that she was a Republican in the “Jeffersonian, Madisonian sense.”

“I’m not a Republican for a party or a person,” she continued. “The Libertarian Party represents those constitutional principles that I agree with.”

Welcome.

[Update a while later]

Megan McArdle analyzes the disaster. I largely agree with her, and it was obvious to me from the beginning that Trump’s primary appeal was his celebrity, bringing out a lot of people, Republican and otherwise, who normally don’t get involved in primary elections.

I also agree that history will record that this was the fault of Bush and his donors, and the narcissism of Christie and Kasich.

[Mid-afternoon update]

It’s not too late for the Republicans to stop Trump:

Republicans would also do well to remember that democracy is not the only important value. Principles such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are far more fundamental. Trump’s platform of mass deportations (including of innocent children born in the US), massacring innocent civilians, large-scale discrimination on the basis of religion, and undermining freedom of speech is a grave threat to those values. So too is the possibility that a victory for Trump might turn the GOP into a US version of neo-Fascist European parties, such as France’s National Front. This horrendous agenda – combined with the dangerous prospect of giving such an unstable person control over the military and its nuclear arsenal – makes Trump a far greater menace than a merely ordinary flawed candidate would be.

Trump cannot be trusted with the other powers of the presidency either. As Larry Summers asks, “[w]hat will a demagogue with a platform like Trump’s… do with control over the NSA, FBI and IRS?” We should not take even a small risk of letting Trump win the presidency. Extraordinary evils sometimes demand extraordinary remedies. And Trump’s nomination easily qualifies as such. Given the nature of his agenda and temperament, the fact that Trump won some 40% of the GOP primary vote (a historically low number for a GOP nominee), is not sufficient reason to give in to him.

The Founding Fathers viewed unconstrained democracy with great suspicion, and sought to establish a constitutional system that would keep it in check. They understood that the fact that large numbers of people support a great evil does not make it right. They knew that voters are often influenced by ignorance and illogic, which are among the major causes of support for Trump. Even if blocking Trump really would be undemocratic, sometimes being undemocratic is the right thing to do. The Republican Party is a private organization, and does not have to follow a popular vote process in choosing its nominee. Indeed, such was not the process throughout most of of American history, up to the McGovern-Fraser reforms of the 1970s.

Yup.

[Update a while later]

Our national dumpster fire:

If nothing changes, this will be the choice presented to Americans in November. An ignorant, unstable conspiracy theorist with no core principles versus an inveterate liar dedicated to ever-expanding government. Clinton and Trump are the least popular major-party candidates in the history of polling. Hillary Clinton is viewed “very unfavorably” by 37 percent of Americans; Trump is viewed “very unfavorably” by a staggering 53 percent.

I honestly don’t know which would be more likely to elect Hillary (assuming she’s the nominee): To let Trump have the nomination, or to replace him with a Republican.

[Update a few minutes later]

The election is not an A/B test:

Donald Trump is unfit for the office.

He is unfit for any office, morally and intellectually.

A man who could suggest, simply because it is convenient, that his opponent’s father had something to do with the assassination of President Kennedy is unfit for any position of public responsibility.

His long litany of lies — which include fabrications about everything from his wealth to self-funding his campaign — is disqualifying.

His low character is disqualifying.

His personal history is disqualifying.

His complete, utter, total, and lifelong lack of honor is disqualifying.

The fact that he is going to have to take time out of the convention to appear in court to hear a pretty convincing fraud case against him is disqualifying.

His time on Jeffrey Epstein’s Pedophile Island, after which he boasted about sharing a taste with Epstein for women “on the younger side,” is disqualifying.

The fact that he knows less about our constitutional order than does a not-especially-bright Rappahannock River oyster is disqualifying.

There isn’t anything one can say about Mrs. Clinton, monster though she is, that changes any of that.

Donald Trump is not fit to serve as president. He is not fit to serve on the Meade County board of commissioners. He is not fit to be the mayor of Muleshoe, Texas.

If he indeed is the Republican nominee, Donald Trump almost certainly will face Hillary Rodham Clinton in the general election. That fact, sobering though it is, does not suddenly make him fit to serve as president, because — to repeat — the problem with Trump isn’t that he is less fit to serve in comparison to Mrs. Clinton, but that he is unfit to serve, period.

But other than that, he’s great.

Thoughts on the dim-witted pretty boy currently leading Canada.

Thoughts from Camille on Trump, Hillary and the fall of the elites.

I too found this interesting:

Hillary’s anti-male subtext, to which so many women voters are plainly drawn, flared into view last week when she crowed to CNN’s Jake Tapper about her proven skills in sex war: “I have a lot of experience dealing with men who sometimes get off the reservation in the way they behave and how they speak….I’m not going to deal with their temper tantrums or their bullying or their efforts to try to provoke me.” The prestige media tried to suppress Hillary’s gaffes here (which breezily insulted both men and Native Americans) by simply not reporting them. Her campaign deflected initial criticism, but she made no personal response until the issue kept escalating. Five days later, she sat down with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell and incredibly claimed that she had been referring to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Rep. Rick Lazio and Vladimir Putin—none of whom have had perceptible “temper tantrums” about her.

My ears went up when I heard that phrase. I haven’t heard anyone in the media comment about it, but if a Republican had said “off the reservation,” you can bet they would have been lambasted as having slurred “native Americans.”

I agree with Jonah: I’m not going to abandon my principles just because he is “a winner”:

The “people have spoken” is not some abracadabra phrase that can change my opinions, never mind my convictions. If “the people” vote that I must hate dogs, I’m not going to start hating dogs. If a plurality of Republican primary voters tells me I have to like blue cheese, I’m not going to start liking blue cheese. And even if 99.99 percent of Americans tell me that I should shed my opinions of Donald Trump, I’m not going to do that either. New facts or some new argument — in theory — could make me change my mind. But crowds, mobs, twitter trolls, bullying hacks, eye-rolling apparatchiks – or even voters can’t just because they all shout at once. Why? Because I am not a politician.

There is no quantity of inevitability about Trump as the nominee that will win my support for such a disaster.

— Apostle To Morons (@Rand_Simberg) May 4, 2016

[Update later morning]

Why #NeverTrump remains relevant. Yes, it wasn’t about denying him the nomination, per se. It’s about preserving what few limited-government principles the party had left.

[Late-morning update]

Five reasons Cruz shouldn’t have dropped out.

I was surprised. When I heard that late deciders had been going for Cruz, I saw it as a good sign going forward. I can only think that his CA donors told him to give it up.