It just keeps getting worse for the GOP establishment.
The harder the Republican aristocracy tries to derail Trump, the more convincing his victories become, in a kind of self-fulfilling, status quo-destroying loop, and now that Michigan has proven just how divided the Democratic vote truly is, it seems even more likely that the brazen billionaire may indeed end up taking the oath of office.
This passage from a Politico story on Rubio’s anxious donors sums up most of what has been wrong with the campaign and the media’s coverage of it:
It’s all too familiar a situation for the Republican elite, and for past Bush supporters who have swung to Rubio, who have long waited for Rubio to translate his many fleeting moments of success into tangible momentum [bold mine-DL].
A couple of good pieces for your consideration, one from the right, the other from the left. First, from the right, here’s one by Trump backer John Kluge, a lawyer and veteran of two Mideast deployments. Excerpts:
On Tuesday, Tehran demonstrated its “deterrent” capabilities by launching several mid-range ballistic missiles.
In a show of force dubbed “The Power of Velayat” (a nod to the Republic’s religious doctrine), Iran tested what looked like several medium-range Qiam-1s, missiles based on the Shahab of which Iran has hundreds stashed in underground storage facilities.
As expected, Trump won easily in Michigan and Mississippi. Trump threatened to get 50% in the primary down south, but didn’t quite get there. With 92% reporting, Trump had 48% of the vote to Cruz’s 36%. In Michigan, he was ahead of Kasich 37-24% with 73% reporting. Cruz posted a very respectable second-place result in Mississippi, and was slightly ahead of Kasich at the time of this writing. Cruz clearly has the best claim to be Trump’s top rival, and proved it again tonight.