Michael Gerson pleads for someone to stop Trump and Cruz:
For Republicans, the only good outcome of Trump vs. Cruz is for both to lose. The future of the party as the carrier of a humane, inclusive conservatism now depends on some viable choice beyond them.
I have already made my point about the absurdity of treating the modern GOP as “the carrier of a humane, inclusive conservatism,” so I’ll just say here that supporters of preventive war have no standing to lecture anyone else on what is immoral or obscene.
The fact that a Trump or Cruz nomination horrifies so many Bush loyalists is one of the few good things about such an outcome. This isn’t the repudiation of Bushism that I would like to see, but it is at least a partial repudiation of one of the most disastrous periods of Republican governance and it is long overdue. An election cycle that sees both a Bush scion and a neoconservative factional candidate go down to defeat cannot be that bad for the well-being of conservatism in this country. It is no accident that the people most dismayed by these developments are the ones most invested personally and ideologically in the failed presidency of George W. Bush. Having done their best to wreck the party and conservatism over the last decade with their horrid, destructive ideas, they now warn about the damage that others may do. If the GOP is ever going to recover from the Bush years, it is imperative that Republicans ignore what Bush loyalists are saying now.