With regard to the presidency, there are for Republicans two possible outcomes that are likely in November: They will lose or they will win. Which is worse is difficult to say: If they lose, as seems likely at this moment, they may very well lose disastrously, giving up the Senate in the process and reducing their standing in the House and in the states. If they win, they will win behind a mercurial, bored, autocratic know-nothing who shares few of their values and has long been strongly opposed to many of the positions they hold dear, on subjects ranging from the Second Amendment to the right to life.
Watching his supporters brawl with protesters at a rally, Trump described the scene: “Exciting.”
No doubt.
The people of Kansas, who traditionally have been more Republican than conservative, are at the moment looking at all this a little sideways, and apparently drawing from this great gaudy reality-television pageant political conclusions different from the one upon which Donald Trump has founded his electoral hopes. There have been a few remarkable blowouts in modern presidential elections: 1964, 1972, 1980, and 1984. Kansas was always on the winner’s side. The state may very well cleave to its historical Republican affiliation in November, out of habit or sentiment. But “Republican” does not mean what it did a year ago, and that will not be without consequences.
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