We’ll have Robert Reich set the table:

My friend, a former Republican member of Congress, phoned me this morning.

HE: We’re crumped.

ME: Crumped?

HE: Cruz and Trump. They’re in the lead. Worse yet, the crazies in the Party are now talking about putting them together on one ticket -- a “super-conservative” duo. My god. Trump is a bigoted moron. Cruz is almost as nuts.

ME: Can they be stopped?

HE: Been on the phone for days with folk who are going to run ads against each of them. But it maybe too late. Everyone I know is apoplectic. Lots of are talking about voting for Hillary. Even Bernie would have a chance against these bozos.

ME: You think they'd affect congressional races?

HE: Sure. Put an asshole at the head of the ticket and the shit falls everywhere.

ME: This isn’t bad news for the Democrats.

HE: It will be if one of these jerks becomes president. Then we’re all crumped.

And then we have the apertif:

Mike Fernandez, a top Bush donor in Miami says if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, he will do the unthinkable and vote for Hillary Clinton.

Fernandez took out a full-page ad in the Sunday issue of the Miami Herald where he called Trump "a BULLYionaire with a hunger to be adored."

Fernandez told the Miami Herald, "My frustration is really with that sector of Republican voters that are so blinded by the demagoguery. I know the campaign -- or any other campaign -- is not going to say it. This is not about Jeb. This is about us. This is about the voter."

Susan provides the amuse-gueule:

[Cruz] doesn’t appear to be looked upon favorably by his fellow Republicans. As Frank Bruni put it, “They loathe him.” 

Nor do his college classmates have warm and fuzzies for him, describing him ...

with words like “abrasive,” "intense," “strident,” “crank,” and “arrogant." Four independently offered the word “creepy,” with some pointing to Cruz’s habit of donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm’s hallway where the female students lived.

But he is surging in Iowa, if only because of the large share of very conservative voters found there.

And Vyan’s got the main course served up:

The more the media pound on [Trump] for this kind of thing, the better he’s gonna do with the type of people who would beat up a black lives protester, and a homeless man that they mistakenly thought was an “illegal,” or stalk a mosque armed with AR-15’s and out each member publicly and believe we need to bring back waterboarding even if it doesn’t work and on and on.

Fortunately as much as he’s getting his fans to love him with this bile, the rest of the nation is completely turned off by it and his chances of pulling together enough electoral vote, particularly with Latinos, are practically nil minus slim. In the process, he is exposing the soft racist underbelly of the GOP for everyone to openly see and view. They really truly can’t deny it anymore, not even a little bit. This may be why he’s begun to stick reporters in “the pen” so they can’t talk to his supporters and see just how batshit crazy bigoted they really are.  He’s thrown away the dog whistle and replaced with the a foghorn and bullhorn. This is why we’re seeing reports that some GOP donors are growing severely nervous and panicked about Trump and are gathering to try and take him down while others in the GOP are openly calling him a fascist. Which, of course, will simply force him to go back on his pledge and run as an independent and totally hose whoever else the GOP tries to run.

All in all I see this as a Win/Win/Win scenario. If Trump gets the nomination, he goes down in flames demographically and embarrasses the GOP for the third time in a row. If Trump doesn’t get the nomination he goes rogue and embarrasses the GOP for the third time in a row. And even if he doesn’t go independent and actually gets beaten and goes away—fat chance, I know—his crazy racist fan base isn’t going to go away, they’ve been exposed now and any candidate they switch to is going to have to deal with them and try and keep them happy, but quiet so as not to scare the bass fish.

There’s only one way I can think of to respond to that scenario. Popcorn.

The digestif comes next year.

(By the way, here’s the Wikipedia entry for the real Mr. Crump.)