Today’s Republicans have stymied every effort at reforming immigration, at achieving true equality for women, at ending the scourge of racist drug laws and criminal sentencing rules. The Republican Party has generated a wave of laws designed to make it harder for black Americans and other minorities to vote. It’s not that Republicans don’t want to deport millions of Mexicans and ban Muslims from our shores. They just don’t like to talk about it in the open.

So when Donald Trump started to attack Mexicans, Muslims and anyone else who popped into his head, Republican leaders may have thought it was bad tactics. But all that talk this year about the “Republican establishment” being aghast at Trump for his outlandish ideas was nonsense.

What really bothers Republicans is that Trump is not a member of their club and did not observe party discipline by saving his disdain for Democrats.

None of Trump’s Republican challengers, of course, had the vision, the guts or the personality to defeat him, and now it’s far too late. By the time Trump attacked Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is hearing one of the lawsuits against Trump’s infomercial disguised as a university, the Republican leadership had long since painted itself into a corner.