For months now, the political press has been running stories about how establishment Republicans are talking about attacking Donald Trump and somehow taking him down. But they never followed through on those threats, so now let’s all point and laugh:
Establishment Republicans are reckoning with something they thought would never happen: That it might soon be too late to stop Donald Trump. [...]
“If anyone else in this field had gone second-first-first in the first three contests, we would all be saying that it’s over,” said Mike DuHaime, a former Republican National Committee political director who guided Chris Christie’s presidential bid.
Former Mitt Romney adviser Katie Packer, who runs a PAC that has spent millions attacking Trump, is understandably frustrated that she hasn’t had more support:
"Many have asked me, 'What can be done to stop Trump?' The answer is simple: TRY," she adds. "In my nearly 30 years of political involvement, I have never seen a campaign where the frontrunner had no aggressive, strategic campaign launched against him."
But now we’re back to that “may be too late” thing. The latest attempt to take Trump down is by propping up Marco Rubio, with pressure building to force John Kasich out of the race to help Rubio get votes he can’t get on his own merit. However, Bloomberg’s Sahil Kapur suggests that may not be enough, citing polls that show Trump continuing to perform strongly in a three-person race against Rubio and Ted Cruz, as well as ones that show Trump picking up support as a second choice of Jeb Bush voters, or if Kasich or Ben Carson drop out.
Top Republicans just couldn’t believe this could happen, and were too scared of Trump to do much to try and prevent it. Now it may be too late … which gets us back to the part where we point and laugh.