The Test of Political Polarization

Here is a rough recent accounting of the relationship between Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The last G.O.P. nominee for President, Mitt Romney, delivered a speech calling Trump “a phony, a fraud,” and warned that his economic policies would lead the country into a “prolonged recession.” The previous nominee, John McCain, called Trump “uninformed and indeed dangerous.” The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, took the extraordinary step of staging a public speech to announce that he was “not ready” to support Trump, though no other candidate remained in the race. The President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s public-policy arm said that Trump has built his life on a “swindle that oppresses the poorest and the most desperate,” and socially conservative radio hosts have amplified that line and made it constant. One of the highest-profile anti-Trump ads, from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, is simply a montage of Republicans attacking him. “A con artist,” Marco Rubio says. “A race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” Lindsay Graham says. “A pathological liar,” Ted Cruz says.