This is Donald Trump’s worst nightmare

At long last, Donald Trump has been un-normalized.

Updated by Ezra Klein @ezraklein Oct 9, 2016, 8:30a

What happened Saturday in American politics was profound, and for Donald Trump, it marks the likely death of his presidential campaign. The permission structure that was slowly, reluctantly built around Trump by the media, by the Republican Party, by the conservative movement, and by Trump himself, is crumbling, and there is no time to rebuild it before the election.

Since Trump won the GOP primary, his party has been working to normalize an abnormal, unpopular, and frankly bizarre candidate. Trump has always had the support of his hardcore fans — but he needed more than that. He needed the mainstream Republicans who didn’t vote in the GOP primaries, or voted for someone else; he needed the independents who didn’t like Clinton, but didn’t trust Trump; he needed the movement conservatives who had entered politics to ban abortion and shrink the government, and who saw little of their crusade reflected in Trump’s history.

Trump needed, to put it simply, the support of a lot of voters who didn’t like him.

And so the party began to make its pitch. Mitch McConnell endorsed Donald Trump, and so, eventually, did Paul Ryan. Fox News ended its brief feud with the Republican nominee and closed ranks around his campaign. Reince Priebus dispatched top RNC staffers to work for Trump’s campaign. Marco Rubio offered his support. The messaging was simple, and sober: better Trump than Hillary, better the lunatic who will nominate our judges and sign our tax bills than the liberal who won’t, and even if you don’t believe in any of that, better to support Trump and keep the House then to abandon him and witness the return of Speaker Pelosi.

The process took on its own momentum. To be a Republican in good standing, in recent months, has meant accepting Trump as the party’s nominee, and working to see him elected. As more Republicans backed Trump, the rest had to follow suit. John McCain endorsed Trump, even though Trump had mocked his war heroism. Ted Cruz endorsed Trump, even though Trump tied his father to JFK’s assassination and mocked his wife’s looks.

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http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/9/13213234/donald-trump-tape-republicans-supporting