The message from the GOP establishment has been made clear repeatedly: somebody has to do something about Trump! Unfortunately for them, determining exactly who that “somebody” would be has been akin to finding a mouse willing to hang the bell on the cat. Anyone attacking Trump seems to find themselves crashing and burning while only driving The Donald’s numbers higher. But now the question has been answered and the call to bring down the frontrunner has been taken up by none other than… John Kasich’s Super PAC? (Politico)

The super PAC supporting Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s presidential bid released its first direct attack ad against Donald Trump on Monday.

The 47-second Web ad is the first spot from the New Day for America super PAC in its planned $2.5 million campaign to knock Trump from his perch atop Republican primary polls. The super PAC previously released an ad featuring an image of Trump side by side with President Barack Obama but the ad Monday marked the first to mention the mogul by name.

We’ll dig into this a bit shortly, but first treat yourself to the video which is, to be generous, confusing in terms of what they were thinking when they put this together and sank money into an ad buy for it.

For a package which came with such dire warnings and “shot across the bow” implications, I’m honestly having trouble seeing where these guys think they’re breaking any new ground here. First of all, it’s not exactly creative in terms of original content. They’ve bascially taken a collection of Trump media package clips which have already been beaten like a dead horse, added some mocking circus music and faded in some black screens with phrases like “Presidential?” or “Leader of the Free World?” in between them.

The clips they selected to mock Donald Trump are nothing new and that’s likely the biggest problem with this effort. They’ve got Donald trashing McCain’s military record (which even put me off for a while) and talking about how he’s always had “a great relationship with the blacks.” The out of context joke about how he would probably be dating his daughter Ivanka if they weren’t related is awkward, but not exactly relevant to the election or anything else for that matter. The Megyn Kelly comment was one example of when the media really thought they “had” Trump, but it’s typical of all of these stories: people already know about it. That story was beaten to death on every cable news channel for weeks on end and it turned out to be a complete nothing burger.

It’s not just Trump’s supporters, but his detractors as well who have been hashing this out for months. People are paying attention to this race and you only have to look at the debate ratings to realize that. The folks across the nation who this advertisement is designed to reach already know all of this and it hasn’t shaken Trump’s numbers a bit. If anything, it’s driven up his popularity. If anyone is expecting Trump to see this advertisement and suddenly come out and apologize they’ve got a long wait in front of them.

As I said at the top, if the GOP establishment wanted somebody to grab the Trump bull by the horns, they would need to find somebody willing to risk the crash and burn which has met pretty much everyone who tried previously. Perhaps the smartest route was to find a volunteer who had already crashed and burned. (Kasich is currently sitting at less than 3% in the national poll of polls.) What does the guy have to lose at this point? But if this is the ammunition they have loaded up for the fight it may be a short lived one. If somebody is going to surpass Donald Trump it’s not going to be accomplished by trying to tear him down. They’ll have to do better than him. For an example of how this might be possible, look at Ted Cruz’s numbers in Iowa again. He didn’t get there by complaining about Trump. He’s making his own case as a potential Commander in Chief and, at least in Iowa, people seem to be giving him a serious look.