Calling Donald Trump an idiot is not one of those things you will find on a list of the world’s most arduous tasks. But if you looked to the current field of viable Republican presidential candidates, you’d think it amounted to an impossibility on par with finding an error in the Bible. A party that desperately needs to win more Latino votes in the 2016 election evidently considers condemning Trump’s depiction of Latin American immigrants as rapists and fiends something worth half-heartedly getting around to eventually.

“When Mexico (meaning the Mexican Government) send its people, they’re not sending their best,” he said last month, when announcing his candidacy. “They’re not sending you (pointing to the audience). They’re not sending you (pointing again). They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume are good people!”

A dozen heroic culture warriors ordinarily wouldn’t take weeks to call out this sort of vitriol, especially coming from a TV personality who’s spent 10 years sounding as tough as a cabbie who talks your ear off about the bar fight he broke up between “three different guys who knew karate.” But there’s an explanation for that lack of courage. You can’t castigate Donald Trump for acting like a stereotyping, fear-mongering bully when he’s just following your lead. The best you can do is accuse him of being loutish while doing it.

Here are some examples of this responsive leadership in action:

Rand Paul, 17 days later: “I don’t know what he’s been saying, but uh, he apparently is drawing a lot of attention.” He apparently chuckled when saying this, so the thing he didn’t know about was funny. Also, I suppose we should hope that “I didn’t hear the thing you just said” works as well in the White House as it does as an excuse to avoid doing the dishes by pretending that you’re unaware your spouse just asked you to.

Bobby Jindal, 19 days later: “I don’t view people as members of ethnic groups or economic groups. This president has done too much to divide us, so obviously I disagree with [Trump’s] comments. I think we need to look at people as individuals.” Disagreed how? Also, Jindal’s reply here is from the Baby’s First Libertarian Argument Handbook, e.g. Racism and classism are forms of collectivism, which is a form of leftism, which is why leftists like Obama are the ones who create racism and class warfare.

Chris Christie, 20 days later: Trump’s comments were wrong and “inappropriate,” and “[I] won 51% of the Hispanic vote.” Points for Christie, but after about 10 seconds on Trump, he immediately pivoted from Trump to call out Ted Cruz for being hypocritical about criticizing other Republicans. There’s no indication how or why Trump is wrong or why Christie appeals to Latinos; instead, the next five minutes of the interview address Cruz, entitlement reform and tone-policing of Trump. Speaking of which:

Rick Santorum, 19 days later: “While I don’t like the verbiage he’s used, I like the fact that he is focused on a very important issue for American workers and particularly, legal immigrants in this country.” Misuse of verbiage aside, this ducks the substance of Trump’s comments, which weren’t about American workers but about Mexican “felons” streaming over the border. Instead, Santorum implies that what Trump said was wrong because of how he said it, which probably isn’t surprising coming from someone who, on the 2012 campaign trail, addressed “entitlements” with, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

To be fair, some Republican candidates did condemn Trump. Former New York Governor George Pataki emphatically criticized The Donald, but that’s the sort of thing you can do when you’re polling about as well as write-in votes for Captain Kirk. Lindsey Graham, who is running for Secretary of Defense in someone else’s administration, was likewise free to say something realistic.

Even a few viable candidates reluctantly stood up as slowly and vaguely as possible.

Rick Perry, 19 days later: “I will stand up and say that those [comments] are offensive, which they were.” Again, Perry eventually tone-polices Trump, but what that means is anyone’s guess. This is the same guy whose concerns about the appearance of offensiveness to minorities was low enough to see him vacation at N*****rhead Ranch. This is also the same guy who, in August 2014, told CNN’s Candy Crowley, “Since September of ’08, we have seen 203,000 individuals who have illegally come into the United States, into Texas, booked into Texas county jails. And, Candy, these individuals are responsible for over 3,000 homicides and almost 8,000 sexual assaults.” Which is a bunch of BS.

Jeb Bush, 14 days later: Bush said that Trump does “not represent the values of the Republican Party,” in Spanish. In English, he said, “I don’t agree with him. I think he’s wrong.” Which, hey, fair play to Bush. Four days later, he added that he “absolutely” took personal offense to Trump’s comments, in light of his own family. Bush’s wife, Columba, is Mexican. One wonders, though, if Bush forgot about that for two weeks.

Marco Rubio, 17 days later: “Trump’s comments are not just offensive and inaccurate, but also divisive,” the candidate said, before immediately laying racial problems at Obama’s feet and reassuring the base about his own policies. “Our next president needs to be someone who brings Americans together – not someone who continues to divide. Our broken immigration system is something that needs to be solved, and comments like this move us further from – not closer to – a solution. We need leaders who offer serious solutions to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system.” Those serious solutions amount to “securing the border” in the same vague but absolutist way that Trump would, in addition to imposing immigration standards that would not have applied to either of his parents. In effect, what Donald Trump said about the border and immigration was wrong because he labeled immigrants as felons, rather than wanting to lock them out on general principle.

But if you want to take the temperature of the Republican response to Trump, look to Ted Cruz, who in his grandstanding way can’t help but give away the game. Fifteen days after Trump’s comments, Cruz defended Trump against the loss of relationship with NBC, stating, “I think he speaks the truth, and I think NBC is engaging in political correctness that is silly and that is wrong.” Days later, on NBC, Cruz added, “I salute Donald Trump for focusing on the need to address illegal immigration. …The Washington cartel supports amnesty, and I think amnesty’s wrong.”

Brand recognize Brand, and Cruz is happy to cross-promote one as insubstantial as his. As my colleague Simon Maloy points out, it’s good long-term strategy. Whenever Trump fizzles out or realizes that campaigning is work, his voters have to go somewhere, and Ted Cruz wants them to have a home. And Trump is currently polling second in Iowa and New Hampshire. Ted Cruz’s interest in those voters is no different than any other candidate’s. But, like Homer Simpson, he keeps accidentally saying the innocuous things in his head and the Republican inner monologue out loud.

Look back at that list. Rand Paul ducked the question, while everyone else avoided it or criticized Trump for the way he said things, not for having bad ideas about immigration. The most principled statements come from dead-enders, wafflers or hypocrites. Jeb Bush’s objection showed up two weeks late and came out of the mouth of a guy who spent a career being fairly positive about immigration before doing a 180 back in 2012 to appeal to hardline Tea Partiers and is now trying to walk that back. Rick Perry is basically Trump with better hair and focus. And Marco Rubio’s immigration policy probably differs from Trump’s only by one gaudy border fence.

The party has run so long on nativist anxiety about foreigners plundering lady liberty, stealing jobs and slowly strangling the republic to death that the next step is just calling immigrants rapists, thieves and murderers. And thanks to years of purity testing in Republican primaries, after trying to ignore the issue for weeks, the remaining candidates have only two options left: try to join or outflank Trump to the right or try to non-ignore ignore him by writing him off as “inappropriate.”



The rest of the world can just call Trump an idiot, a man with few ambitions outside of being Trumpy, whose remaining strands of what one might call policy are wisps of spun sugar extruded by hot air, reminding everyone of the tacky coif that sits atop his blanched Smithfield Ham of a face. The Republican Party can’t even luxuriate in ad hominem. Yeah, they could call him an empty suit and a bozo, but that stops working the moment anyone notices that he sounds like a slightly loaded version of themselves.