One of the little-known but important tremors set off on the political Right by Donald Trump’s emergence involves that pillar of the GOP, the Christian Right. I offered some analysis of this phenomenon earlier this week at New York:

Trump pretty evenly split the conservative evangelical and traditionalist Catholic vote with Cruz and others in the GOP primaries, to the chagrin of many conservative Christian leaders who viewed Trump as a man whose policy views, personal morality, and all-around hatefulness made him an inappropriate candidate for people claiming to follow the Prince of Peace.
Now that Trump has triumphed, however, there’s a stirring among Christian conservatives that goes far beyond the usual pre-convention demands that the party and its candidate make social issues a priority and eschew any heresies. It’s best reflected in the war of words that has broken out between Trump and his camp and Russell Moore, chief political spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention. Throughout the 2016 primaries, Moore has excoriated Trump and warned conservative evangelicals to reject his devilish charms. But now he’s lashing out at Trump-supporting evangelicals with a level of contempt usually reserved for liberal secularists (per this passage from his recent New York Times op-ed):

A white American Christian who disregards nativist language is in for a shock. The man on the throne in heaven is a dark-skinned, Aramaic-speaking “foreigner” who is probably not all that impressed by chants of “Make America great again.”

In a tweet after Trump started attacking him as a “nasty man” via social media, Moore cited chapter and verse (1 Kings 18:17-19):

“When he saw Elijah, he said to him, ‘Is that you, you troubler of Israel?'” the verse reads. “‘I have not made trouble for Israel,’ Elijah replied. ‘But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals.'”

What Moore is doing is urging his fellow believers to take a prophetic stance — a protest
against fundamental social wickedness — against Trump and the Christians who support him. No prominent conservative Christian has done anything like this with a Republican political leader since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign rang in the political marriage of conservative Christians and the GOP that created what we know as the Christian Right.
Moore doesn’t speak for all Christian conservative leaders, obviously. Some, like longtime Christian Right leader Tony Perkins, seem to be following the old formula of fencing in the GOP nominee with platform planks and pledges on particular issues before putting on the party yoke and supporting him. And a few others, most famously Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., dived into the churning waters of Trump’s brand of cultural conservatism from the get-go. But the fact remains: This once unified movement has split and could for the first time in decades stay split through a general election.
One of our most insightful observers of the Christian Right, Sarah Posner recently observed that Trump may represent a subculture of American Christianity that’s declaring its independence from the larger tribe:

Deliberately or not, Mr. Trump may be the perfect candidate for an evangelical subculture that has increasingly become enamored with the prosperity, or health and wealth, gospel. In trying to build a singular religious faction that agreed on some core issues (like abortion), the Republican Party has courted that subculture, even though many evangelicals consider prosperity theology to be heretical. Mr. Trump acts more like a televangelist than an evangelical.

To put it more broadly, Christian Right leaders have for a long time encouraged the people in the pews to conflate their faith with cultural conservatism and nationalism, standing as Christian soldiers against the secularist trends that were transforming God’s Redeemer Nation from its Judeo-Christian moorings in patriarchal families and bourgeois values. What Trump has exploited, like many political leaders in 20th-century Europe, is that a lot of culturally threatened conservative white Christians are willing to throw away the cross in favor of their flag, their race, their tribe, and everything that’s familiar. The big question is whether fear and hatred of the secular-socialist enemy can once again paper over the growing division between Christian nationalists and people who follow Moore in arguing that Christ has no nation….
[I]f Trump goes down in ignominious defeat, his candidacy could actually strengthen the Christian Right in the long run by disciplining or expelling its fascistic elements. But in the meantime, one of the fascinating subcurrents of this election will be the hurling of Old Testament thunderbolts by conservative Christian figures at the leader of the political party their predecessors claimed as Christ’s own.

Selah.

Paul Krugman’s NYT op-ed column on “The Making of an Ignoramus” provides a reminder that the GOP’s nominee-apparent is not making this stuff up when it comes to his worst economic ideas; in most cases he is parroting well-established Republican policies and values. As Krugman explains:

Truly, Donald Trump knows nothing. He is more ignorant about policy than you can possibly imagine, even when you take into account the fact that he is more ignorant than you can possibly imagine. But his ignorance isn’t as unique as it may seem: In many ways, he’s just doing a clumsy job of channeling nonsense widely popular in his party, and to some extent in the chattering classes more generally.
…Basically, it involves running the country like a failing casino: he could, he asserted, “make a deal” with creditors that would reduce the debt burden if his outlandish promises of economic growth don’t work out.

Trump’s economic hucksterism, particularly on the issue of the debt, has left the financial and economic experts with “a mix of amazed horror and horrified amazement,” adds Krugman. “One does not casually suggest throwing away America’s carefully cultivated reputation as the world’s most scrupulous debtor — a reputation that dates all the way back to Alexander Hamilton.”
The global reverberations could be disastrous, says Krugman. “The Trump solution would, among other things, deprive the world economy of its most crucial safe asset, U.S. debt, at a time when safe assets are already in short supply.”
But, it’s not like Trump’s failed casino economics is bucking his party’s economic policies. The Republican party long ago abandoned the principle of economic prudence. Trump just restates their views with his customary bombast, and much of the media falls for it as something new and flashy, when really it’s the same old GOP story of rich guys screwing around with the hard-earned assets of everyone else.
With respect to Trump’s debt “crisis” hysteria, Krugman spotlights the real reason behind it:

.. Lots of supposedly serious people have been hyping the alleged threat posed by federal debt for years. For example, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, has warned repeatedly about a “looming debt crisis.” Indeed, until not long ago the whole Beltway elite seemed to be in the grip of BowlesSimpsonism, with its assertion that debt was the greatest threat facing the nation.
A lot of this debt hysteria was really about trying to bully us into cutting Social Security and Medicare, which is why so many self-proclaimed fiscal hawks were also eager to cut taxes on the rich. But Mr. Trump apparently wasn’t in on that particular con, and takes the phony debt scare seriously. Sad!

Noting that Trump is “extrapolating from his own business career, in which he has done very well by running up debts, then walking away from them,” Krugman adds,

…Much of the Republican Party shares his insouciance about default. Remember, the party’s congressional wing deliberately set about extracting concessions from President Obama, using the threat of gratuitous default via a refusal to raise the debt ceiling.
And quite a few Republican lawmakers defended that strategy of extortion by arguing that default wouldn’t be that bad, that even with its access to funds cut off the U.S. government could “prioritize” payments, and that the financial disruption would be no big deal..Given that history, it’s not too hard to understand why candidate Trump thinks not paying debts in full makes sense.
…When Mr. Trump talks nonsense, he’s usually just offering a bombastic version of a position that’s widespread in his party. In fact, it’s remarkable how many ridiculous Trumpisms were previously espoused by Mitt Romney in 2012, from his claim that the true unemployment rate vastly exceeds official figures to his claim that he can bring prosperity by starting a trade war with China.
None of this should be taken as an excuse for Mr. Trump. He really is frighteningly uninformed; worse, he doesn’t appear to know what he doesn’t know. The point, instead, is that his blithe lack of knowledge largely follows from the know-nothing attitudes of the party he now leads.

Trump has a talent for making other Republicans’ worst economic policies and ideas seem like they are his creations. However contentious Democratic party economic proposals may be, no one can say that they haven’t been scrutinized and honed by serious economists and policy wonks — in stark contrast the the GOP. As Krugman concludes, “in this election, one party has largely cornered the market in raw ignorance.”

At Vox.com Matthew Yglesias conributes the most credible explaination yet offered why Sen. Bernie Sanders will surely support Hillary Clinton, if she wins the Democratic nomination:

…Sanders already has all the reasons he could possibly need to give Clinton his full-throated support.
Thanks to the primaries, Sanders has emerged as a substantial factional leader inside the Democratic Party — someone whose statements and tweets will garner media attention, whose email list will be coveted and envied by other Democrats in Congress, and whose support or opposition to a measure will matter to a national constituency. That gives him, potentially, considerably more influence over national affairs than he’s had in his previous 25 years in Washington. But essentially all of that influence hinges on Clinton winning the election in November.
That, rather than anything to do with platform concessions or “lesser of two evils” talk, is why Sanders will almost certainly do everything in his power to boost Clinton this fall. He’ll do it because it’s the right thing for Bernie Sanders.

Their differences on key issues are more a matter of degree than substance, as Yglesias notes,

Clinton and Sanders are pulling in the same direction on almost every issue.
Sanders wants to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour; Clinton wants $12.
Sanders wants a massive increase in taxes on the wealthy; Clinton wants a modest one.
Sanders wants a big new government-run health insurance program to cover everyone; Clinton wants to expand an existing government-run insurance program to cover more people.
Sanders wants a hard cap on bank size and complexity; Clinton wants enhanced capital requirements for large and complex banks that would discourage size and complexity.

Yglesias adds, “…On virtually every issue, Sanders has promised to go further than Clinton has in the same direction. Which is another way of saying that implementing Clinton’s agenda would be a way of moving closer to Sanders’s goals — so in pursuit of his goals, he’s going to want to put her in the White House.”
In addition, argues Yglesias, a Clinton victory gives Sanders substantially enhanced clout as the leader of a bona fide grass roots movement that has the ear of the President. It would give Sanders inside leverage, as opposed to being the leader of a movement on the outside.
Further, it would give Sanders the inside track to become the chair of one of the most powerful Senate panels, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, with “influence over legislation, of course, but also the ability to call hearings on whatever subject he likes.” That’s a lot better than being a minority member of the committee headed by a Republican, which would likely accompany a Trump victory.
Sanders is a pragmatic progressive, not a Naderesque ideologue who would rather go down in a blaze of purist glory than support reforms that can benefit millions of working people. Sanders is not giving up his efforts to win an upset victory. But he clearly understands that a Clinton presidency would provide support for his policy reforms, support that would be completely denied by Republican control of the Senate. For both moral and practical reasons, he will work hard to elect the Democratic presidential nominee, as will most of his supporters.

From John Stoehr’s “The Donald’s Trump Card Isn’t an Ace: The media narrative that Donald Trump is winning over white working-class voters is false” at U.S. News: “That Trump performed more or less on par with his rivals in Rust Belt states suggests that his supporters were already firmly conservative or already primed to choose any Republican, populist or otherwise, according to Andrew Levison, author of “The White Working Class Today” and analyst for “The Democratic Strategist,” a journal of public opinion and strategy. Indeed, Levison observed in a March white paper, Trump performed best not with Midwestern Reagan Democrats but with white working-class Southerners. This, he argued, isn’t due to Trump’s “right-wing version of economic populism” but “the racial and xenophobic elements of his platform.”

In his NYT op-ed explaining why Trump is perpetrating “Working-Class Fraud,” Timothy Egan observes, “Trump’s solution to the woes of working families is to slap a 45 percent tariff on goods coming from China. The Chinese would retaliate, of course, meaning American companies that sell aircraft, medical equipment and vehicles to China — part of the $116 billion in exports there last year — would have to cut jobs to make up for losses.”

Ed Kilgore has a reminder that “The Working Class Isn’t All That White Anymore” at New York magazine: “While Sanders has (by my back-of-the-envelope calculation) carried non-college-educated white voters in 14 of the 24 primaries and caucuses with exit polls (Hillary Clinton won them in six states, and they were basically tied in the other four), he’s lost non-white non-college-educated voters just about everywhere. That shouldn’t be a footnote. Nor should the frequent comments on the political left about Clinton betraying “the working class” and now suffering the electoral consequences go unchallenged without some attention being paid to her robust support among working folks who happened to be non-white or non-male.”

At The American Prospect Rich Yeselson has a review article discussing Tamara Draut’s pre-Trump book, “Sleeping Giant: How the New Working Class Will Transform America” and prospects for rising class consciousness as a political force. Yeselson observes, “..People make their own history, but not always in the humane ways we would hope–working-class agency isn’t always a positive social force. The weakness especially of private-sector unionism is critical here because, as Draut notes in a perceptive aside, when unions wane, “what’s also lost is the civic participation and political education unions provide.” While unions don’t guarantee interracial and ethnic solidarity–again, see Western Europe–they are, as of now, the only organizations we have that, in their normative goals and often their actions, encourage just that.”

In his post, “Bernie Sanders’s Legacy? The Left May No Longer Need the Rich,” Nate Cohn reports at The Upshot that “According to exit poll data, liberals represented a majority of white Democrats without a college degree in nearly every primary contest. It’s a huge change from just a decade or two ago, when so many white working-class Democrats were conservative (check out this 1995 Pew Research typology of voters if you want to see what the Democratic base used to look like). Mrs. Clinton tended to win “moderate” white voters without college degrees in these states, but she lost among the self-described liberals…A lot of this is a generational divide. Mrs. Clinton won among white voters without a college degree who were over age 30, but she was pummeled among those who were younger.”

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s executive order restoring voting rights to more than 200,000 of his state’s citizens who have completed their felony sentences has awakened the fury of the Republican establishment, which threatens to sue to prevent it, mostly because VA is a major swing state. The New York Times editorial board notes that “Virginia’s voting ban, like most of the others that collectively disenfranchise about six million Americans, is a 19th-century relic rooted in racism — a direct reaction to the passage of the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed African-Americans the right to vote…Politicians in Virginia were blunt about their motivation. In 1902, when Virginia’s voting ban was expanded at the state’s constitutional convention, Carter Glass, a state senator, said its purpose was to “eliminate the darkey as a political factor in this state in less than five years, so that in no single county of the Commonwealth will there be the least concern felt for the complete supremacy of the white race in the affairs of government…Before Mr. McAuliffe’s order, one in five black Virginians was permanently barred from voting because of a past felony conviction.”

It’s just a snapshot, but Clinton and Trump are in a stat tie in a new GA poll.

At The Fix Chris Cillizza explains why “The GOP’s electoral-map problem is not about Trump. It’s about demographics.” Cillizza reasons, “if Clinton wins the 19 states that every Democratic nominee dating to her husband has won and she wins Florida (29 electoral votes), she wins the White House. It’s that simple…Or if she wins the 19 reliable Democratic states and Virginia (13 electoral votes) and Ohio (18). Or the 19 states plus Nevada (6), Colorado (9) and North Carolina (15)..You get the idea. There are lots and lots and lots of ways for Clinton — or any Democratic nominee — to get to 270 electoral votes. There are very few ways for Trump — or any Republican nominee — to get there.”

The Cook Political Report puts it this way: “As a result, we are shifting 13 ratings on our Electoral Vote scorecard, almost all of them favoring Democrats. Our assessments are based on publicly available polling, data on demographic change and private discussions with a large number of pollsters in both parties. Much could change, but undecided voters begin more hostile to Trump than Clinton…With these changes, 190 Electoral Votes are in the Solid Democratic column, 27 are in Likely Democratic and another 87 are in Lean Democratic – enough for a majority. Yet another 44 Electoral Votes are in Toss Up. Although Iowa, New Hampshire and Ohio could shift to Lean Democratic and Nevada could shift to Likely Democratic, we are holding off on changes in these states until we see more evidence. “

With speculation already underway as to the identity of Donald Trump’s running-mate, I could not help but comment at New York on one familiar name that’s already popping up: Newt Gingrich!

[T]he news that Newt Gingrich was on Donald Trump’s short list for the vice-presidential nomination was both startling and predictable. Gingrich has been buried politically so many times — as a Rockefeller Republican in the 1970s, as an annoying gadfly House member in the 1980s, as a national pariah in the 1990s, and as a failed presidential candidate in 2012 — that yet another resurrection at the age of 73 seems preposterous yet at the same time fitting in such a preposterous political year.
It’s possible Gingrich’s name is being whispered aloud by Trump intimates like Roger Stone as a matter of simple gratitude: For months the former Speaker has defended the mogul like few other respectable voices in the GOP. But there is undeniably a certain congruence to the idea of Trump-Gingrich: A presidential candidate with no coherent worldview could use a front man who cannot go five minutes without articulating some sort of historical or metaphysical perspective on the most banal of subjects.
Indeed, despite the crackpot nature of many of Gingrich’s many policy enthusiasms (his obsession with colonizing Mars is emblematic), his is what passes for a Big Brain in American politics, and as a veep prospect would happily occupy political media in babbling defense of Trump, leaving the Big Guy to wage more strategic battles. His résumé is long enough to cover Trump’s lack of political experience many times over (Newt’s first congressional campaign was on the cusp between the Nixon and Ford administrations), yet his reputation as a bomb-throwing “revolutionary” is as fully developed as Trump’s own. And at a time when Trump is looking for deep pockets to help finance a general-election contest, Newt’s ability to shake money trees could be helpful as well. Just as his name has surfaced as a potential veep, his 2012 sugar daddy Sheldon Adelson has announced he’s one billionaire Trump can count on to write some checks.
You could even make the argument that Newt’s failed 2012 campaign paved the way for Trump’s unlikely candidacy in this cycle. Gingrich made Islamophobia a central part of his presidential bid, constantly citing the phantom menace of Sharia law in his pandering appeals to Christian-right and nativist audiences. He also anticipated some of Trump’s economic-policy heresies, getting into very hot water by disrespecting one of Paul Ryan’s budgets and then going crudely populist in attacks on Mitt Romney’s career as a corporate downsizing consultant.
But Gingrich’s compatibility with Trump has its downside, and choosing him might represent a doubling-down on some less-than-savory aspects of the mogul’s record and personality. Like Trump, Gingrich has been known to flip-flop and backtrack; I once wrote a profile of my fellow Georgian based on decades of close observation that stressed his chameleon-like ability to change with the times (most famously by becoming the epitome of True Conservatism after an early career as a very nearly liberal Republican running to the right of a Georgia Dixiecrat). While he would superficially help repair Trump’s relationships with Republican regulars and movement conservatives, none of them have much reason to trust Gingrich, either.
And then there’s the personal stuff. Between them, Trump and Gingrich have six marriages and enough admitted adultery to turn the average politician into a pillar of salt. Perhaps not coincidentally, Gingrich struggled as much with the hostility of women voters in 2012 as Trump has in the current cycle. As Republican nominee Trump seeks to reverse historically poor numbers among women, does he really want to invite fresh recital of the story of his running mate’s alleged presentation of divorce papers to his first wife (who was, in an added creepy-sounding note, his former high-school math teacher) while she was in a hospital battling cancer? Everything else being equal, probably not.
Trump’s done pretty well, however, defying political logic, and perhaps Newt is just too complementary to him — the nerdy sidekick to the big man on campus — to pass up. If it happens, the happiest man on Earth would be Bill Clinton, who turned Gingrich into his punching bag and perfect foil in the mid-1990s and would probably enjoy beating him up all over again on his wife’s behalf.

As would we all.

You may have heard references to recent opinion polling which indicates that discontent about Obamacare is rising. AP’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar eplains what is behind it in his article, “Stirred by Sanders, Democrats Shift Left on Health Care.” As Alonso-Zaldivar notes,

Two recent polls have shown an uptick in negative ratings of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, and the shift seems to come from Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. For example, in the latest installment of the Kaiser Family Foundation health care poll, the share of Democrats with unfavorable views increased by 6 percentage points.
Underlying the unease seems to be a growing conviction that the law did not do enough. About 27 million people remain uninsured, and many who gained coverage find it costly. Kaiser found that for the first time, a 51-percent majority of Democrats wants to expand what the law does, a sharp increase from the 36 percent who said so in December.

That’s a pretty significant increase in support for more government intervention in strengthening health security. Further,

Overall, Democrats still support the Obama health care law by broad margins, especially if the alternative is repealing it. But the nonpartisan polls released last week registered surprising movement.
A Pew Research Center poll found that overall the public disapproves of the law by 54-44 percent, a change from last summer when it found Americans almost evenly divided. Part of the explanation was a 12-point drop in support among Democratic-leaning independents.
Kaiser’s April tracking survey found 49 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of the health law, with 38 percent favorable. That showed slippage from a 47-41 split in March.
Among Democrats, the share of those with unfavorable views went up from 19 percent in March to 25 percent in April. “It’s being driven by the Democrats. That’s what’s so interesting here,” said Mollyann Brodie, who directs the Kaiser poll.

Critics of Obamacare want the spin to point to less government involvement in healthcare. But the evidence says that is not the case. Overall, Americans want more government involvement in strengthening America’s health security, not less.
The author credits Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, who has called for “Medicare for all,” with increasing pubic suport for moving in the direction of single-payer health care, or an expanded role for government in providing health security.
Majority or not, there is still a large segment of the public which doesn’t like Obamacare. Although some who feel this way have had experiences that influence their opinion, there are many who are unaware of the benefits of Affordable Care Act. This is the fault of Obamacare supporters, including the Administration, who have not done a particularly good job of educating the public.
This is part of a larger pattern of poor salesmanship and very little public education following legislative reforms, which afflicts Democrats more than the GOP. No, you can’t count on the press to do an adequate job of explaining new reforms. Their job is to sell their product, not yours.
Dems are good at twisting arms to get bills passed, but nearly clueless about how to educate the public. Republicans generally do a better job of selling their policies to the public, particularly when it comes to disparaging Democratic reforms.
FDR was arguably the last Democratic president who fully understood the importance of selling his reforms and educating the public about them — both before and after enactment. It’s as if Democrats, the so-called “party of big government” expect beneficial legislative reforms to sell themsleves, based on merit. Not gonna happen.
There needs to be a major poll to find out how much Americans actually know about the provisions of the ACA, for example. I suspect it would be shockingly little. Follow-up polling, after citizens are educated about particular reforms, would likely show an impressive uptick in public support.

With Donald Trump clinching the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, a lot of people are closely watching the exact words other Republican pols are saying about their new titular leader. But they may be missing the real reason Cruz and Kasich dropped out so quickly, and why other GOPers don’t seem to be sweating the general election. I wrote about their motives at New York:

One of the things you do when you are positioning yourself for a future presidential run is to pose as a party loyalist and then volunteer for down-ballot drudge work. That’s how Richard Nixon rehabilitated himself in 1964, and why he had an enormous advantage over Nelson Rockefeller — who attacked Goldwater supporters at the convention and refused to lift a finger for the ticket in the general election — in 1968. When Ronald Reagan jumped into the ’68 race very late and Nixon was trying to hold the line against the wildly popular Californian among Southern conservatives, his loyalty to Goldwater probably saved the day. That’s the context in which we should understand the decisions by Ted Cruz and John Kasich to fold their tents before it was mathematically necessary this year. Why make permanent enemies of Trump supporters? Both these men are almost certainly thinking about giving it another whirl in 2020, after Trump’s inevitable defeat. Being the party loyalist who nonetheless offers the party a very different future is the safest course of action.
Anyone who actually joins Trump’s ticket or gets too close to the fire of the Donald’s rhetoric, on the other hand, is probably not thinking about 2020. The number of pols who find something else to do when Trump’s circus comes to their town this fall will likely show how few Republicans are jockeying for spots in a Trump Administration and how many are looking beyond November.
And what will their post-Trump arguments be? We can already anticipate some of them.
For Ted Cruz and the movement conservatives he represents, the argument is easy: Republicans lost in 2008 and 2012 and 2016 because they did not make their campaigns a crusade for True Conservatism, and thus it’s now time, finally, to give it a try in 2020.
For John Kasich, the easiest argument will probably be that Republicans need to fix their gazes on general-election polls from the get-go next time around, and make electability their principle litmus test for candidates.
There will be plenty of Republicans arguing for a return to the post-2012 RNC Autopsy Report, and an applications of its lessons — lessons Trump’s nomination implicitly and violently rejected. Whether or not Marco Rubio makes a political comeback in 2018, you can expect his name to be mentioned in conjunction with the easiest route to a GOP recovery among Latinos — unless George P. Bush wins the governorship of Texas in the interim (I’m at least half-joking). Nikki Haley will get some early mentions as a potential party savior, and maybe before long Joni Ernst will be deemed ready for the Big Time.
And then you can expect a second act from the Reformicons, the intellectuals who typically wanted the GOP to do a better job of representing the views and economic interests of its white-working-class base, but for the most part were as horrified as anyone else by how Trump fit that particular bill. They probably need a more forceful champion than Rubio or Jebbie in 2020, with an agenda more evocative than the odd family tax credit.
There will be other would-be shapers of the post-Trump Republican Party as well, whether it’s another White House candidate from the Family Paul, or fresh faces nobody’s thinking about. But the great thing about the impending Trump disaster is that none of the survivors will get blamed and everyone can pretend it was a one-off aberration — a sort of natural disaster — that need not recur. It will help enormously that 2018 — like 1966 — should be a very good year for the GOP. Thanks to fortuitous turnout patterns, midterms are now always elections where Republicans should be better than external circumstances might suggest. The midterm in a third straight Democratic administration should be especially strong for the “out party.” The Senate landscape for 2018 is almost impossibly pro-Republican. And on top of everything else, the more down-ballot damage the party suffers this November, the more likely crazy-large gains will be two years later. Indeed, it will be easy for Republicans to point to 2010, 2014, and 2018 and argue that there’s nothing wrong with the GOP that the right presidential candidate cannot fix.
And without a doubt, that candidate is looking at him- or herself in the mirror each morning.
Yeah, it’s groan-inducing to say this, and not something I want to be true at all. But thanks to the newly minted 2016 Republican presidential nominee, the 2020 Invisible Primary has already begun.

Some recent comments from conservatives about Trump’s impending GOP nomination, the future of the Republican Party and, in some cases their intention to vote for some other candidate:

Rep. Scott Rigell [R-VA]: “My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party, and to live with a clear conscience I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgment, temperament and character needed to be our nation’s commander-in-chief. Accordingly, if left with no alternative, I will not support Trump in the general election should he become our Republican nominee.”
Former Romney staffer Garrett Jackson: “Sorry Mr. Chairman, not happening. I have to put country over party. I cannot support a dangerous phony.”
Former top Romney strategist Stuart Stevens: “I think Donald Trump has proven to be unbalanced and uniquely unqualified to be president. I won’t support him… Everyone has to make their own choice. I think Trump is despicable and will prove to be a disaster for the party. I’d urge everyone to continue to oppose him.'”
Rep. Carlos Curbelo [R-FL]: “I have already said I will not support Mr. Trump, that is not a political decision that is a moral decision.'”
Sen. Ben Sasse [R-NE]: “Mr. Trump’s relentless focus is on dividing Americans, and on tearing down rather than building back up this glorious nation. … I can’t support Donald Trump.”
Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes: “This is what political division looks like. Trump’s claim to be a unifier is not just specious, it’s absurd. This casual dishonesty is a feature of his campaign. And it’s one of many reasons so many Republicans and conservatives oppose Trump and will never support his candidacy. I’m one of them.”
Former McCain adviser Mark Salter: “The GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it’s on the level. I’m with her.”
RedState editor Ben Howe: “#ImWithHer”
MA Gov. Charlie Baker: “I’m not going to vote for [Donald Trump] in November.”
Former RNC Chairman Mel Martinez: “I would not vote for Trump, clearly.”
Former VA Senate candidate, Ken Cuccinelli on Trump: “When you’ve got a guy favorably quoting Mussolini, I don’t care what party you’re in, I’m not voting for that guy.”
Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman: “Leaders don’t need to do research to reject Klan support. #NeverTrump”
Former Bush spokesman Tony Fratto: “For the thick-headed: #NeverTrump means never ever ever ever ever under any circumstances as long as I have breath never Trump. Get it?”
Former Eric Cantor communications director, Rory Cooper: “#NeverTrump means…never. The mission of distinguishing him from Republican positions and conservative values remains critical.”
Conservative blogger Erick Erickson: “Reporters writing about the “Stop Trump” effort get it wrong. It’s ‘Never Trump’ as in come hell or high water we will never vote for Trump”
Fox News’ Steve Deace: “Apparently @secupp has a #NeverTrump list to see who keeps their word to the end. You can sign my name in blood.”
Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini: “I will never vote for @realDonaldTrump. Join me and add your name athttp://NeverTrump.com . #NeverTrump”
America Rising co-founder and former Jeb Bush communications director Tim Miller: “Never ever ever Trump. Simple as that.”
Former Rep. J.C. Watts [R-OK] said he’d write-in someone before voting for Mr. Trump in November.
Former Director Of NV and MS GOP Cory Adair: “You’ll come around,” say supporters who just got done saying their candidate doesn’t need me. Nah. I won’t. #NeverTrump
Townhall editor Guy Benson: “Much to my deep chagrin (& astonishment ~8 months ago), for the 1st time in my life, I will not support the GOP nominee for president.”
DailyWire editor Ben Shapiro: “Really? #Nevertrump. Pretty easy.”
Wisconsin conservative radio host Charles Sykes: “I suppose I should clarify: #NeverTrump means I will nevereverunderanycircusmtances vote for @realDonaldTrump”
Editor at RedState, Dan McLaughlin: “For the first time since turning 18, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President.”
Conservative columnist George Will: “If Trump is nominated, Republicans working to purge him and his manner from public life will reap the considerable satisfaction of preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party while working to see that they forgo only four years of the enjoyment of executive power.”
Redstate contributor Leon Wolf: “I will never vote for Donald Trump. I will not vote for him in the general election against Hillary, and I would not vote for him in a race for dogcatcher. Heck, I would not even vote for him on a reality television show.”
Former Romney adviser Kevin Madden: “I’m prepared to write somebody in so that I have a clear conscience.”
Pete Wehner, former speechwriter for George W. Bush: “I will not vote for Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination.”
Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard: “Donald Trump should not be president of the United States. The Wall Street Journal cannot bring itself to say that. We can say it, we do say it, and we are proud to act accordingly.”
Undersecretary of State under George W. Bush, Eliot Cohen: “I will oppose Trump as nominee. Won’t support & won’t work for him for more reasons than a Tweet can bear.”
Former Jeb Bush digital director Elliott Schwartz: “In case there is confusion about #NeverTrump.”
Doug Heye, Former RNC communications director: “I cannot support Donald Trump were he to win the Republican nomination.”
Former IL GOP Chairman Pat Brady said he’d back a third-party candidate or “just stay home” if Mr. Trump is the nominee.
Washington Examiner’s Phillip Klein: “I have officially de-registered as a Republican.”
Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson: “I registered Republican when I was 18 because I thought free markets and liberty were important. Not sure what “Republican” means today.”

The way things are going, don’t be surprised if this list doubles every couple of days. More on the great conservative Exodus, right here.

In his column, “Please don’t mainstream Trump,” E. J. Dionne, Jr. warns of the threat of media complaisancy in the months ahead: “Many forces will be at work in the coming weeks to normalize Trump — and, yes, the media will play a big role in this. On both the right and the left, there will be strong temptations to go along…There will be much commentary on Trump’s political brilliance. But this should not blind us to the degree that Trumpism is very much a minority movement in our country. He has won some 10.6 million votes, but this amounts to less than a quarter of the votes cast in the primaries this year. It’s fewer than Clinton’s 12.4 million votes and not many more than the 9.3 million Bernie Sanders has received.”
All of a sudden, Red State loves them some Merrick Garland.
Senior editor Jeet Heer explains at The New Republic why “Bernie Sanders Owes It to His Supporters to Keep Fighting,” and notes, “The fact that Sanders, this late in the race, can draw a majority of voters in Indiana means his revolution has yet to run its course. He owes it to his supporters in California and other late states to give them a chance to vote. Nor is a vote for Sanders meaningless, even if his loss is foreordained. The delegates he continues to rack up will give him a greater voice in the convention and allow his supporters to shape the party platform…57 percent of Democrats say they want Sanders to stay in the race. The party base, if not the party elite, appreciates what Sanders is doing by continuing his fight. He has every reason to listen to them..”
At Politico Ann Karni ponders “Clinton’s dilemma: To punch or not to punch: Brooklyn operatives are studying how Trump’s GOP rivals fought and failed against the unscripted mogul.” Karni quotes Cl;inton Spokesman Brian Fallon: “She will not be passive, like we saw from so many of the Republicans he vanquished…But she will also not follow him into the gutter. She can challenge him in the way the Republicans wouldn’t — on the issues and on his hateful rhetoric.”
Associated Press reports “In the Year of Trump, Democrats Are Fielding a Near-Record Number of Female Senate Candidates.” As AP notes, “Democrats will have female Senate candidates on the ballot in nine states in November, a near-record…Donald Trump, whose commanding win in Indiana cemented his improbable status as the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, is viewed unfavorably by 70% of women, according to Gallup…Women vote in higher numbers than men–in 2012, 10 million more women cast ballots than men–and vote more heavily Democratic. This year, strategists in both parties expect those trends to be magnified given Trump’s unpopularity with women, Clinton’s historic candidacy (though she herself faces high negative ratings), and the large number of women running for Senate.”
Roll Call’s Walter Shapiro provides a plausible take on the GOP’s mess in his “Republicans “Couldn’t Muster the Honor to Fight Trump: Demands of party unity recall Vietnam War excuses.” Shapiro warns, echoing Dionne, “Nervous Republicans and bored journalists will have a shared interest in creating a story line about how the real-estate baron has grown in stature as a candidate. A week without crude insults and Trump will seem like a modern-day statesman. A few cordial meetings with GOP leaders and Trump will be hailed for embracing conservative principles.”
At Salon.com, via Alternet.org, Conor Lynch has a provocative post, “What the Left Can Learn From Donald Trump: Winning the Working Class Means Fixing Your Sales Pitch: Trump’s policies are a nightmare, and his message is full of hate. But the Left must learn to connect like he does.” Lynch urges, “If progressives hope to restore democracy and economic justice in America, they must rail against the economic elite as forcefully as Trump has railed against the liberal elite.”
Just to show yas how fair-minded we are, congratulations to Georgia’s Republican Governor Nathan Deal for having the mettle to veto two wingnut bills, the transgender bathroom bill and now the ‘campus carry’ bill passed by gun nuts in the state legislature. We stop short of recommending a ‘Profiles in Courage’ Award just yet, at least until Deal OKs Medicaid expansion, the lack of which has already proven to be life-threatening for too many Georgians. Still, the Governor’s recent boldness is commendable, especialy at a time when his party is collapsing under the weight of Trumpmania.
Now it seems prophetic:

Nate Silver offers some interesting data and analysis of Donald Trump’ “base” in his latest post, “The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support: His voters are better off economically compared with most Americans,” at FiveThirtyEight.com. An excerpt:

…The definition of “working class” and similar terms is fuzzy, and narratives like these risk obscuring an important and perhaps counterintuitive fact about Trump’s voters: As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

Silver explains his methodology, which draws on exit polls, and adds that “Trump voters’ median income exceeded the overall statewide median in all 23 states, sometimes narrowly (as in New Hampshire or Missouri) but sometimes substantially. In Florida, for instance, the median household income for Trump voters was about $70,000, compared with $48,000 for the state as a whole.” Further, says Silver,

…There’s no sign of a particularly heavy turnout among “working-class” or lower-income Republicans. On average in states where exit polls were conducted both this year and in the Republican campaign four years ago, 29 percent of GOP voters have had household incomes below $50,000 this year, compared with 31 percent in 2012.

When you factor in race, to focus on white working-class voters, says Silver, “The median household income for non-Hispanic whites is about $62,000, still a fair bit lower than the $72,000 median for Trump voters.” In addition, “although about 44 percent of Trump supporters have college degrees, according to exit polls — lower than the 50 percent for Cruz supporters or 64 percent for Kasich supporters — that’s still higher than the 33 percent of non-Hispanic white adults, or the 29 percent of American adults overall, who have at least a bachelor’s degree.”
Trump voters do display a hgh level of discontent about the economy, concludes Silver. “But that anxiety doesn’t necessarily reflect their personal economic circumstances, which for many Trump voters, at least in a relative sense, are reasonably good.”
Clearly, plenty of white working-class voters are still quite leery of Trump, though many agree with his views on trade. There is a solid argument that Democrats can get a larger share of this demographic group with well-targeted policies and outreach.