Boston Globe editorial: “At some point, after the election, Republicans will also need to ask themselves some tough questions about how their actions and inactions made the party vulnerable to Trump. After all, a candidate spewing anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, authoritarian rhetoric didn’t come out of nowhere; the Tea Party has been strong enough long enough that someone like him shouldn’t be a surprise. Chasing short-term political gains, the GOP missed a lot of chances to fight the hateful currents that now threaten to overwhelm it.”

HE: The GOP has been winking at racist dumb-shit sentiments and aggressively soliciting votes of unwashed rurals since the dawn of Richard Nixon‘s Southern strategy. The Trump phenomenon is simply a case of the mob getting in front of the strategists, of the rural cart leading the horse.

Boston Globe editorial: “For now, Republicans ought to focus on doing the right thing: putting up every legitimate roadblock to Trump that they can. The Republican Party’s standard deserves to be hoisted by an honorable and decent man, like Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, elected on the convention floor. It is better to lose with principle than to accept a dangerous deal from a demagogue.”

Excerpt from 4.2.16 HE riff, “New Republican Goal — Defeat With Honor“: “It’s becoming more and more likely that the Cleveland gathering will be an historic shitshow in which Ted Cruz or John Kasich could overpower Trump on the second and third ballot. In so doing the Republican heirarchy will essentially be saying to all those rural, nihilistic, under-educated, over-60, pot-bellied, heroin-snorting Trump bubbas out there that the party’s over, fellas, and tough shit.

“Cruz would also lose against Clinton, of course, but if Kasich were to be nominated (a seemingly all-but-impossible scenario) he could emerge victorious. Either way the idea that seems to be taking hold is that Republicans need to at least lose honorably in the fall, and that means without Trump as a deciding factor.”