My week off came at a bad time. Two weeks ago, pundits were still speculating about a brokered Republican Convention, and wondering what would happen if Donald Trump didn’t arrive in Cleveland with a majority of delegates locked up on the first ballot. Today, Trump is the presumptive nominee, leaving those Republicans who didn’t support him with a difficult choice: get behind a man many of them despise, sit out the presidential election and let Hillary win, or actively jump ship and help Hillary win.
The early polls — whose predictive value is still iffy at this point — show Trump headed for a massive defeat in the fall. If that happens, will more blame accrue to those Republicans who follow him off the cliff? Or to the ones who refuse to get behind him? If you’re a Republican who feels that Trump has stolen your party, which choice puts you in a better position to take it back in 2018 and 2020?
That’s the topic of this week’s featured post “What Will Republicans Do Now?”, which should be out around 8 EDT. The weekly summary will cover other aspects of the end of the Republican primary campaign, a great two weeks for political comedy, the Puerto Rican debt crisis, and what Cinco de Mayo can teach us about cultural appropriation, before closing with the most addictive, time-eating web site I’ve ever linked to. That should appear by 11, or maybe earlier.
The Weekly Sift 
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“leaving those Republicans who didn’t support him with a difficult choice: get behind a man many of them despise, sit out the presidential election and let Hillary win, or actively jump ship and help Hillary win.”
One other option is running a third party candidate. Such a choice could throw the selection of the next president into the House. That would then give the Establishment the power to select the next president.