Are Democrats Tricking the GOP Into Nominating Trump?

Jonathan Chait: “A fact that has somehow become even more obvious over the last few months is that Republican voters truly adore Donald Trump. At the beginning of the year, there appeared to be a strong chance the party’s voting base could be weaned off its cult-worship relationship with the 45th president and reattached to a more reliable, coherent, and less criminally implicated presidential nominee like Ron DeSantis. As that prospect has waned, despair has set in especially deep for a specific cohort: the anti-anti-Trumpers — conservative Republicans who desperately wish Trump were not their party’s leader, but if he is, will ultimately devote most of their energy to attacking his critics.”

“The anti-anti-Trumpers dreamed that their yearslong humiliation of having to run interference for a man they loathed was about to end. Now they must face up to the likelihood of devoting at least the next 15 months, and possibly more than five years, to insisting Trump’s multitudinous crimes are no worse than things done by Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and so on.”

“Who would force them once again into such a mortifying position? Many of the anti-anti-Trumpers have identified the culprit for Trump’s hammerlock on the primary. It is the Democrats.”