Gut-wrenching behavior from a party who hasn t been challenged for the betrayal of their party in decades. You don t even have to be a fan of Trump s to find this story disturbing on so many levels 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:While still hopeful that Mr. Rubio might prevail, Mr. McConnell has begun preparing senators for the prospect of a Trump nomination, assuring them that, if it threatened to harm them in the general election, they could run negative ads about Mr. Trump to create space between him and Republican senators seeking re-election. Mr. McConnell has raised the possibility of treating Mr. Trump s loss as a given and describing a Republican Senate to voters as a necessary check on a President Hillary Clinton, according to senators at the lunches.He has reminded colleagues of his own 1996 re-election campaign, when he won comfortably amid President Bill Clinton s easy re-election. Of Mr. Trump, Mr. McConnell has said,  We ll drop him like a hot rock,  according to his colleagues. 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.So no, it s not a given that he ll lose. But even if it were, how would an incumbent GOP senator whose seat is up benefit from alienating Trump fans by running attack ads against the party s own nominee? That s insane. Via: Hot Air