Aaron Blake writes in The Washington Post about the potential “nightmare scenario” facing members of the NeverTrump movement: a Trump victory.

From The Washington Post:

They assured each other he had no real shot of winning the presidency. They said he would be an embarrassment to the Republican Party and drag down the rest of the party with him, both in 2016 and for years to come.

To be sure, many arguments of the so-called “NeverTrump” movement in the Republican Party were based on mere principle. But some were more political pleas — that he was bad for the party, electorally speaking, and that Trump-inspired doom lay ahead.

It hasn’t happened — at least, it hadn’t as of the race’s final week. Trump appears to be within shouting distance of winning the presidency, and the Republican base is as united in voting for him (87 percent of them are behind him) as Democrats are in voting for Hillary Clinton (also 87 percent), according to Friday’s Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll.

In other words: It looks like the NeverTrumpers are leading a movement without a real base. And no matter what happens on Tuesday, they’ll have a mess to clean up.

…

But in the near-term, Trump’s ascendance in this race is about the worst thing that could have happened to those Republicans taking a stand against him. And the fact that many GOP elected officials who called for him to drop out after that “Access Hollywood” video are now supporting him speaks to the fact that they underestimated the backlash that results from running afoul of Trump supporters.

In other words: no matter how healthy the results, the GOP can still expect plenty of bloodletting.

Read the rest here.