Molly Ball: “The other candidates who’ve gone after Trump aggressively (Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry, Rand Paul) haven’t exactly soared in the polls. Trump is like an electric fence that the candidates keep running at, only to get zapped and fall back.”

“On the other hand, supporters of the strategy say, somebody had to do it—Trump isn’t going away on his own. And Bush risked looking weak if he left Trump’s attacks, which were essentially shots at his manhood, unanswered. Bush isn’t trying to win over Trump’s supporters, who are unlikely ever to favor him; he’s trying to consolidate the two-thirds of the party that dislikes Trump and wants to see the bully knocked down. And he’s trying to reassure his nervous donors—you know, the ones who’ve already poured $100 million into his candidacy—that he has some fire in the belly.”

Jeb Bush said “that he would run for president only if he could do so with a sunny spirit, but Mr. Trump, the surprise leader in the polls, has turned this summer into a miserable one for Mr. Bush, gleefully ignoring the traditional rules of political engagement,” the New York Times reports.

“There is the personal ridicule — constantly questioning Mr. Bush’s vigor, invoking a since-retracted statement by his mother, Barbara Bush, that ‘we’ve had enough Bushes’ in the White House, and even alluding to his wife’s Mexican heritage in discussing immigration. But the torment goes deeper than that. Emphasizing bluster over ideas, Mr. Trump has turned the campaign into a tabloid-style clash of personalities, heavy on provocation and insults. What little policy that has been discussed mostly revolves around Mr. Trump’s appeals to anxious white conservatives: stoking fears about immigrants, gang members and foreign countries that, in his telling, are eclipsing America.”

“It is a race, in other words, that embodies what Mr. Bush likes least about politics.”