It’s come to this. The GOPe really wants Marco Rubio to win the nomination. As unlikely as it’s looking for Rubio these days, Mitch McConnell is planning to run negative ads this fall is Trump is the nominee. Yes, the GOP-e will run negative ads against their candidate for president if Trump wins the primary season.
| Mitch McConnell preparing to run negative ads against Trump |
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There are so many intriguing twists in this NYT story about behind-the-scenes efforts to stop Trump that you’ll save time by skipping this post and reading it yourself. This is the showstopper, though:
I don’t know where to begin. For starters, the fact that McConnell thinks Trump losing to Hillary is a given explains a lot about why Republicans got caught so flat-footed by Trump in the primary. It’s not a given. He may lose but he won’t get blown out. If we’ve learned nothing else over the eight years, we’ve learned that there’s no such thing as an easy race for Hillary Clinton. Trump will start the campaign as an underdog with poisonous favorables but he’s superb at staying on offense, as we’ve seen over the past 36 hours — and he’ll have endless attacks to pursue against Hillary to fuel the offensive. His alpha-male shtick may get a long look from centrist Democrats too, especially men who are worried about having a woman commander-in-chief for whatever reason.
Beyond that, let me blow your minds by gently countering some bedrock conservative conventional wisdom: The media will not cut off Trump’s insta-access to their airwaves the day after he clinches the nomination in the name of helping Hillary. The idea that they will is treated as the most elementary fact among righties I know, but there’s nothing the media loves more than a circus and Trump is just one big orange-y circus. Their coverage will turn more skeptical, surely, and he might not get quite the same amount of anytime-day-or-night call-in opportunities that he has now, but you’re kidding yourself if you think Joe Scarborough will turn down a request from the Republican nominee to spend an hour of airtime gladhanding him. Trump is the ultimate shiny object. He delivers ratings. Hillary will need to figure out a way to counter that.