The fantastic amount of anti-Trump material pouring out across the media and throughout the whole of the left means they perfectly well understand the threat Trump poses to them. If they thought he was not a the most serious threat to the Democrats among the Republicans, they would stay silent and let nature take its course. They are not silent and are doing all they can to stop him. At the beginning they thought of him as the easiest one to beat and brought him forward out of the pack. Now they have seen the error of their ways and are pushing as hard as they can in the other direction.

I have just gone through Lucianne and the headlines there. It was near on a quarter of the stories were anti-Trump from every media source you could name. They mean it – the writerly class, they understand that he needs to be stopped, and of course this writerly class consist of almost as many Republicans as Democrats.

You cannot work for Murdoch and support Donald Trump. There are no exceptions to this rule, and unfortunately the absence of exceptions includes Andrew Bolt. This is his post today, with its last line in support of a Trump critic, that he was absolutely right. Here’s the whole thing, including the quoted comment:

Taking it to Trump, who by trashing the race probably helps make any Republican less electable:

Charlie Sykes, a popular radio host in Milwaukee, welcomed Donald J. Trump to his state in a phone interview on his program on Monday, explaining that “here in Wisconsin we value things like civility, decency and actual conservative principles.”

And then, for Mr. Trump, the 17-minute interview went downhill from there.

Mr. Sykes, an outspoken conservative and opponent of Mr. Trump, began by pressing the Manhattan businessman to apologize to Heidi Cruz, the wife of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, for resending a Twitter post juxtaposing an unflattering picture of Mrs. Cruz with a shot of his wife, Melania Trump, a former model.

The spat began after an anti-Trump “super PAC” produced an ad geared at Utah voters featuring an image of Mrs. Trump, then Melania Knauss, posing nude from a January 2000 GQ magazine pictorial.

On Mr. Sykes’s program, Mr. Trump defended the photo of his wife — calling it “an artsy picture” — but blamed Mr. Cruz for starting the feud, even though the super PAC that produced the Texas ad is not connected to the Texas senator.

“I expect that from a 12-year-old bully on the playground, not somebody who wants the office held by Abraham Lincoln,” Mr. Sykes said.

Later, when Mr. Trump again complained, incorrectly, that Mr. Cruz “started it,” the radio host interjected: “Remember, we’re not on a playground. We’re running for president of the United States.”

Absolutely right.

Heidi Cruz works for Goldman Sachs so is the very essence of the wrong side of the debate. That Cruz must legally not in any way be associated with any PAC supporting him means he has no choice but to keep at least three degrees of separation. But to think that Cruz’s team did not start the attack on Trump’s wife on its way is ridiculously naive.

But that is hardly the point. Someone who wishes to investigate if someone is worthy of the office once held by Abraham Lincoln (and now held by Barack Obama) does not begin by attacking Trump for defending his wife against an attack by a Cruz supporter. If these are the high principles being defended, we are lost and doomed already.

I was going to give Donald a day off but came across this article from The Daily Telegraph on Drudge of all places, under the heading Trump Down Under. The same zombie Murdoch press that has brought us Malcolm as PM is using its resources to oppose Trump for President. I actually noticed the moment in the press conference yesterday when Trump held his two fingers up which was actually a gesture of no significance. But it did occur to me that if you were the sort of media organisation that liked to run anti-Trump stories, and of course if you were either in England or Australia since the gesture has no negative meaning in North America, then there it was. But then again, there it was when Churchill was doing the same during the war.

My wife says this all the time about which I always say that the Israelis must already know this and are doing everything they can, but perhaps not: Israel needs an effective PR machine. If this is true, then there is something seriously wrong:

Barry Shaw, Senior Associate for Public Diplomacy at the Israeli Institute for Strategic Studies wrote (February 10, 2016) in Israel National News that, “It is disgraceful how incompetent the Israeli government is when it comes to public diplomacy. It is not shockingly bad, it’s actually dangerously damaging to us.” Shaw goes on to say, “They concentrate on international diplomacy, government to government, government to international institutions, and what a mess they are making of that when it comes to protecting Israel from de-legitimization, anti-Israel resolutions, labeling, and a host of other slanders. They don’t really know how to deal with the problem, even when we are getting hit by so-called friendly countries. They’re clueless.”

This is based on another article, The Israeli government and public diplomacy; a national disgrace where we find:

When it comes to Israeli advocacy they’re incompetent in the Knesset, they’re incompetent in the government ministries and they’re incompetent in the global embassies.

How we have come to such a pass is beyond me. And when it comes to it, where would I get a fact sheet that lays out the Israeli answer to all of the BDS arguments we hear? If there is no source for such material, then incompetent is much too soft a word for what is going on.

This is from Ann Coulter’s latest column:

In more than a dozen tweets that year — the very year that Marco Rubio nearly destroyed the nation with his amnesty bill, as the “conservative” media cheered him on — Trump repeatedly denounced the maniacal push for amnesty:

— “Immigration reform is fine — but don’t rush to give away our country! Sounds like that’s what’s happening.” (Jan. 30, 2013)

— “Amnesty is suicide for Republicans. Not one of those 12 million who broke our laws will vote Republican. Obama is laughing at @GOP.” (March 19, 2013)

— “Now AP is banning the term ‘illegal immigrants.’ What should we call them? ‘Americans’?! This country’s political press is amazing!” (April 3, 2013)

— “TRUMP: IMMIGRATION BILL A REPUBLICAN ‘DEATH WISH'” (June 4, 2013)

You may not like what he says, but he is certainly consistent. He may even be right, and just think what it means if he is.

An unusually acute examination of the American election from The Wall Street Journal by John O’Sullivan, Quadrant‘s interim editor. It is now almost universal among elite opinion on the right that Donald Trump is a disaster in the making, with an anyone but Trump the standard response. That there are people who classify themselves as Republican who would vote for Hillary over Trump only proves how empty their views must be about the nature of the problems that must be solved. If they really cannot see the certainty that Hillary would be the final nail in an American decline then it is beyond me why anyone should listen to a thing they say.

It is almost an understatement, at this point, to say that the Trump phenomenon has changed everything in American politics, but it has. Here’s a brief laundry list:

Immigration. From the start of this century, both Democratic and Republican elites have wanted to pass “comprehensive immigration reform” of a broadly liberal kind. Popular opposition prevented this, but the party elites headed off any movement toward a more restrictive approach. Mr. Trump, encouraged by the European migrant crisis, picked up the issue, made it the booster rocket of his campaign and now advances a policy that would reduce immigrant numbers overall. Comprehensive immigration reform is not quite dead, but it is collapsing.

Libertarianism. Young people were said to see it as a respectable modern version of conservatism. But libertarianism and its prophet, Sen. Rand Paul, have been pushed aside by the rush of popular support to Mr. Trump, who represents, if anything, a movement from libertarianism to activist government.

Isolationism versus interventionism. This was going to be the debate between Sen. Paul and Sen. Marco Rubio to determine the future direction of the GOP’s national security policy. Instead, despite remarks on Vladimir Putin that are silly and worse, Mr. Trump has swept aside this debate. He plays to a widespread mood in American life that is perturbed about Mr. Obama’s failing foreign strategy and responds, in effect, that the U.S. should fight “no more unwinnable wars.” Mr. Trump promises that he won’t pick fights but will definitely win those fights he gets into while pursuing a fairly narrow version of America’s national interest.

Reforming the welfare state. Walter Russell Mead, writing in the American Interest, has called for the reform of what he labels the “Blue State Model”—that is, the fiscally failing American welfare state of entitlements and urban programs, resting on budget-busting public sector salaries and pensions. Mr. Mead and others have advanced serious schemes for cuts that would make the system sustainable in the long run. Again, Mr. Trump has sweepingly promised to preserve entitlements against such reforms, discouraging other Republicans from making this tough case.

All this is true, but for myself, the most important change Trump may bring is a weakening of the media’s narrowing the range of acceptable opinion and some lessening of the grip that political correctness has on policy and public discourse. America is heading for the rocks and we will join them if nothing is done to turn things around. It is this most of all that O’Sullivan sees and understands making him alone of all of the major commentators to have accepted that Trump is not an unmitigated bad.