Free Republic

A reader writes, “Everyone says Donald Trump can’t win. Exactly why not?” David Leonhardt, editor for The Upshot, considers the question: Can Donald Trump win the Republican nomination? Sure, it’s within the realm of plausibility; he’s now been leading the polls for months, after all. But it seems highly unlikely because it would violate just about every historical pattern of presidential races. No modern candidate has received a major-party nomination — and perhaps no candidate in American history — while being opposed by the party’s elites: donors, media figures, politicians and others. Elite support matters because they have the ability...

I never expected to write these words, but I miss Mitt Romney. On Wednesday, the day the front-runner for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination was in New Hampshire alleging that Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives may actually be clandestine terrorists, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee was in Washington, talking sense. “Donald Trump will not be the nominee,” Romney told a group of business-school students at Georgetown University.

A little noticed event earlier this week brought ominous tidings to the Trump 2016 campaign, which spent most of the summer riding high on a wave of triumphalism and defiance against the GOP establishment machine. Donald Trump held a campaign event in Iowa, and CNN didn’t even acknowledge that it was happening. Indeed, while the assembled crowd waited to hear the latest Trump Brand Pablum in person, even CNN’s chryon blared on about the huge crowds that were at that moment being drawn by … Bernie Sanders.