This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on Feb. 18, 2016 For the record, I have never said, written, or thought that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination. Like pretty much everyone else, I didn’t see him catching on, going as high as he did, or remaining at the top as long as he did, and it never seemed plausible that he would actually win a majority of the delegates at the Republican National Convention this summer. I understood that there were clearly a lot of really angry, alienated, conservative, and Republican voters who saw something in what Trump was saying and how he was saying it. They seemed bent on “sending a message” to Washington, to career politicians, and to the GOP establishment. But once they got past the “sending a message” phase and into the “selecting a president” phase, I believed they would seek a more plausible vehicle for their rage. My hunch was that Ted Cruz was going to be that vehicle, no matter what the establishment thought. Trump had been averaging about 35 percent in
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