‘Blame’ for Trump assigned

It may seem too early be be figuring out who is to "blame" for Donald Trump's nomination as the GOP standard-bearer (for starters, he hasn't actually been nominated yet, and second, he could yet go on to pull off what seems now would be a surprise victory in November). But Charlie Cook, a well-regarded political analyst, has opted to get a jump on things in this morning's National Journal:

Republicans Have Only Themselves to Blame for Trump

The truth is that Re­pub­lic­ans were not in a mood to nom­in­ate Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, John Kasich, Marco Ru­bio, or any oth­er es­tab­lish­ment-ori­ented can­did­ate. They also des­pised Ted Cruz so he would nev­er do. None of the oth­er al­tern­at­ives meas­ured up. They were so angry with the gov­ern­ment that they wanted to fire a shot­gun blast at Wash­ing­ton. They ended up shoot­ing them­selves in the foot. They got Don­ald Trump and a gimpy party.

In oth­er words, Re­pub­lic­ans thought send­ing a mes­sage was more im­port­ant than beat­ing Hil­lary Clin­ton and tak­ing back the White House. So I guess Clin­ton and the White House wer­en’t im­port­ant enough for them to dial back their lofty prin­ciples. The per­fect was in­deed the en­emy of the good.

A na­tion­al on­line sur­vey of re­gistered voters, drawn from a lar­ger sample of 11,705 by Sur­vey Mon­key con­duc­ted June 27 to Ju­ly 3, found that Clin­ton led Trump by 5 points, 48 to 43 per­cent, which was pretty much in line with most oth­er re­cent polls. But when matched against Mitt Rom­ney, the two were tied at 45 per­cent. House Speak­er Paul Ry­an edged Clin­ton by 2 points, 47 to 45 per­cent, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich bested her by 8 points, 50 to 42 per­cent. The poll found that while Trump pretty much pulled to­geth­er the Re­pub­lic­an vote, he was at a dis­tinct dis­ad­vant­age among pure in­de­pend­ents and Demo­crat­ic-lean­ing in­de­pend­ents, groups that were happy with Kasich and sat­is­fied with the oth­ers.

We are now start­ing to see Clin­ton widen her lead over Trump. The Pew Re­search Cen­ter con­duc­ted its first gen­er­al-elec­tion poll between June 15-26. In a sur­vey of 2,245 voters, Pew found Clin­ton lead­ing by 9 points, 51 to 42 per­cent. In­ter­est­ingly, 55 per­cent of Trump sup­port­ers con­ceded that they were vot­ing against Clin­ton, not for Trump, with just 41 per­cent ac­tu­ally sup­port­ing the Re­pub­lic­an. As for Clin­ton, 50 per­cent of her back­ers said they were cast­ing a vote for her, but nearly as many (48 per­cent) said they were vot­ing against Trump. A Demo­cracy Corps na­tion­al sur­vey con­duc­ted June 23-28 among 900 likely voters by Demo­crat­ic poll­ster Stan Green­berg found Clin­ton with an 11-point ad­vant­age, 48 to 37 per­cent, with a typ­ic­al Demo­crat­ic can­did­ate for the House hold­ing an 8-point ad­vant­age, 49 to 41 per­cent (the can­did­ate names and parties are in­dic­ated to the in­ter­viewee when known, oth­er­wise just the party is giv­en).

Cook himself notes that the election is still four months away, and anything can happen. But at the moment his analysis is worth considering.