Ross Douthat and Chris Hayes have been wondering about what the political scene would look like when the GOP is ready to finally and permanently divorce itself from Trump. Is there a bellwether? It is tough to tell, because for more than a year, GOP politicians have been lousy judges of their own voters, and there is more than one kind of Trump supporter.
One thing to keep in mind is that Republican elites have already tried to walk away from Trump several times. House speaker Paul Ryan called Trump's attack on a Mexican-American judge “the textbook definition of a racist comment.” That is the kind of language that party leaders might use about a presidential candidate that they planned to cut loose to an epic general-election defeat. But Trump's poll numbers held up, and Paul Ryan presided over the convention that made Donald Trump the Republican nominee.
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