Republicans Have Only Themselves to Blame

Charlie Cook: “My re­ac­tion is not ter­ribly sym­path­et­ic. If Hil­lary Clin­ton is such a hor­rible per­son, so ill-suited for the pres­id­ency, why didn’t they unite be­hind some­body, any­body, while there was still time to beat her? After Don­ald Trump lost the April 5 Wis­con­sin primary to Ted Cruz, the door was open. But when Trump swept the Acela primar­ies on April 26, win­ning not only Con­necti­c­ut, Delaware, Mary­land, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Is­land but every county with­in each state, the race was over. The door had slammed shut.”

“The truth is that Re­pub­lic­ans were not in a mood to nom­in­ate Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Marco Ru­bio, or any oth­er es­tab­lish­ment-ori­ented can­did­ate. They also des­pised Ted Cruz so he would nev­er do. None of the oth­er al­tern­at­ives meas­ured up. They were so angry with the gov­ern­ment that they wanted to fire a shot­gun blast at Wash­ing­ton. They ended up shoot­ing them­selves in the foot. They got Don­ald Trump and a gimpy party.”