REPUBLICANS IN SHOCK – AT 11:41 A.M. ET:   The Republican Party is in shock.  Few ever expected Donald Trump – seen as the political equivalent of a carnival barker – to come anywhere near the presidential nomination of the party of Reagan.  (Or is it the party of Reagan?)  Now look where he is.  And his opponents, many of them at least, are losing heart.  From The Politico: 

With Donald Trump marching toward a nomination that few believed he could win, Republicans once bent on defeating him are now reassessing their efforts to stop him.

Trump’s dazed and demoralized adversaries find themselves at a defining moment: After unloading millions of dollars in attack ads aimed at destroying the real estate mogul, after the party’s 2012 nominee delivered a no-holds barred speech targeting him, and after conservatives far and wide spoke out in unrelenting terms about how he could never be president, he’s more dominant than ever — with another rival vanquished, a massive delegate lead and his two remaining opponents looking increasingly like the next to go.

While some Republicans insist on standing firm against the businessman, more and more are contending that it’s time to reach a point of acceptance — and that a drawn-out primary or convention battle could be worse.

“I’m soul-searching right now,” said Penny Nance, president and CEO of Concerned Women for America, who last year explored the possibility of launching an anti-Trump campaign. “There’s still a pathway to defeating him, but it’s getting harder to see that.”

COMMENT:  "Stop" movements rarely succeed because, by the time they're launched, the person they want to stop is pretty much unstoppable.  And it may well be with Trump.  He's tapped into a substantial anger among the American people, or at least that segment of the American people who vote in Republican primaries.  He really has no solutions, he's brash, he's crude, but he seems to be a fighter, which is what his supporters love.  The more abrasive he is, the louder they cheer.  And they believe that his business success, his brand, will translate into good government. 

I hope they're right.  But I'm not ready to bet the Republic on it.

And yet, who's out there?  Ted Cruz is brilliant, a true Constitutionalist, and would probably make a fine president.  But he has a personality that even a mother would reject, and is intensely disliked in the U.S. Senate.  I mean, a guy should have at least one friend.  I could support him, but he doesn't warm the heart.

John Kasich has won one state, his own.  Only he knows why he's still in the race.

The odds are favoring Trump.  And we think back to the one event that allowed this to happen, the conviction of General David Petraeus.  I felt at the time that the administration pursued Petraeus with such a vengeance because it wanted to destroy him as a potential presidential nominee.  If my suspicion was correct, they succeeded.  He would be the obvious antidote to Trump today, playing the same role Eisenhower played in the Republican Party in 1952, but he's been neutralized.  How sad for the country.

March 19, 2016