As we've previously reported, a significant number of convention delegates are conspiring to stop Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention in what would amount to a smash-and-grab heist of the nomination. The mission is daring, a high-wire act with no real certainty of success. To pull it off, the anti-Trump delegate cabal would need quite a bit of help. Here's something they don't need however:
Noooooo, Bill Kristol! My man! You have one job and that's to never offer up predictions. You know this! I mean, look at this nonsense. You are currently competing with ESPN's Steven A. Smith in a desperate battle to see whose oracular abilities are the most star-crossed.
As The Washington Post's Paul Farhi noted back in February, a black swan event occurred in the lead-up to the GOP primary season: Kristol managed to make two accurate predictions. The Weekly Standard's standard-bearer correctly saw that Rand Paul was not going to succeed in the Republicans' crowded presidential field, and -- in a genuinely nervy moment -- he accurately foretold that Jeb Bush would not win his party's nomination either. “I think there’s no way there will be a Bush-Clinton race in 2016,” he said, in a moment of prescience that rarely comes his way.
Most of the time, however, Kristol's prognostications portend doom for whatever enterprises he seeks to anoint. What he should be doing now is basking in his momentary success and properly anticipating that a reversion to the mean was in the offing. Instead, he's gone all out, predicting that GOP chair Reince Priebus -- who's hitherto demonstrated the fortitude of a box kite trapped in a heavy wind -- will provide the anti-Trump effort with the steely leadership it needs to succeed.
Oh well, R.I.P., Stop Trump Movement.
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Jason Linkins edits “Eat The Press” for The Huffington Post and co-hosts the HuffPost Politics podcast “So, That Happened.” Subscribe here, and listen to the latest episode below.