George Will has a rather odd plan for dealing with a Trump nomination:
Were he to be nominated, conservatives would have two tasks. One would be to help him lose 50 states [bold mine-DL] — condign punishment for his comprehensive disdain for conservative essentials, including the manners and grace that should lubricate the nation’s civic life. Second, conservatives can try to save from the anti-Trump undertow as many senators, representatives, governors and state legislators as possible [bold mine-DL].
Conservatives can certainly do one or the other, but they cannot do both of these. If some conservatives are determined to inflict the most crushing defeat possible on Trump, that effectively means doing the same to the rest of the party. If they want to do their best to salvage what they can in Congressional and state elections, they’ll have to do what they can to shore up the top of the ticket. It is unlikely that one can call for intra-party fratricide on one part of the ballot without depressing overall turnout for that party. Put another way, one cannot strengthen “the anti-Trump undertow” without putting more Republican officeholders at risk of being pulled under by it. Punishing Trump will inevitably mean punishing the party’s other candidates. Anti-Trump Republicans don’t want to own up that this is what they are calling for, but it is.