Republicans are still struggling to figure out what the hell to do about Donald Trump. He's sucking up so much of the oxygen in their presidential primary that other candidates are being driven to
moronic stunts involving chainsaws and
Trumpesque quotes in a desperate bid for attention. But cutting Trump out of the race in any serious way while he's still leading in many polls?
Not bloody likely, no matter how much other Republicans dream of it:
At a meeting of the Republican Governors Association this week in Aspen, Colo., donors and operatives mused about how to prevent him from hijacking the debate.
One idea that came up was to urge three leading candidates — Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor; Mr. Walker; and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — to band together and state that they would not participate in any debate in which Mr. Trump was present, using his refusal to rule out a third-party bid as a pretext for taking such a hard line. The thinking, according to a Republican involved in the conversations, was that the lesser-funded prospects who have been eclipsed by Mr. Trump would follow suit, and the TV networks airing the debates would be forced to bar Mr. Trump in order to have a full complement of candidates.
The Bush, Walker, and Rubio campaigns aren't going to go for it—they don't want to piss off his many supporters, and can you imagine the invective Trump would unload on them?—and Fox News would be unlikely to go along even if they did. But if Republican donors and operatives are sitting around fantasizing about this, well, take it as another sign that they don't think Trump's popularity is going to crater any second now and leave the Serious Candidates to get on with the race. They're worried he's not going away soon and that he could reshape the Republican primary in a meaningful way. That worry is, and the reality would be even more, a glorious and a beautiful thing.