GOP trapped by Trump
[...] the difficulty Republicans have in identifying a single candidate to take Trump down speaks to a deeper problem.
While some conservatives such as Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., have brought the two strands together, there is ambivalence about how to go after Trump because the party itself has often played at backlash politics around race and immigration — and because, throughout President Obama’s tenure, it embraced Trump as an ally in stirring resentment on the far right.
Mitt Romney, now one of Trump’s leading antagonists, warmly welcomed Trump’s endorsement in the 2012 presidential campaign.
[...] some of Trump’s most extreme positions have won wide approval from the Republican rank-and-file.
[...] exit polls reported by CNN and the Washington Post found broad backing for his temporary ban on Muslims from entering the U.S:
[...] the party has subtly and not so subtly played on racial resentment — birtherism, the claim that Obama is a Muslim, Ronald Reagan’s famous “welfare queen” reference — for decades.
In any event, many Republicans dislike Trump primarily because they can’t abide his flight from conservative orthodoxy.
[...] this strategy requires a philosophical and tactical unity of purpose that party leaders have, so far, been incapable of mustering.